


Alpha Solo

by Jalice



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Adam Driver Smut, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluffy Ending, Married Poe Dameron/Finn, Omega Verse, Remix, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:21:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26199253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jalice/pseuds/Jalice
Summary: She’s pretty sure she’s at the top of Solo’s shit list. Not that it matters. His abusive outbursts she can handle. As an Omega and a female in the field of medicine-- Agatha is no pushover.But that scent. The irresistible way he smells to Agatha, is completely, deplorably, wasted on Solo. The paradoxical wish to be close to a complete prick of a colleague makes her feel like every pathetic Omega cliché she can think of. It makes her cringe and fills her with self-loathing.Yep. Ben Solo is the absolute worst.----I was introduced to the ABO omegaverse when I read a wonderful fic calledYour Pretty Little Heart.But I couldn’t help wondering, would an older, more experienced woman put up with Ben’s crap? Also I toyed with focusing on consent and power for the omegaverse more explicitly. Premise starts very similarly to original then veers off to a different ending. ^^
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Your Pretty Little Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388135) by [Ever-so-reylo (Ever_So_Reylo)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ever_So_Reylo/pseuds/Ever-so-reylo). 



> **So this fic is a remix inspired by, and in some scenes appropriated from, _Your Pretty Little Heart_ with an AU character as the protagonist instead of Rey. (Appropriation occurs mostly with the smut scenes, which were too perfect to be remixed other than minor character tweaks). The beginning is really similar, but it veers off to a different ending.**   
>  **For the record, I did try to contact Ever-so-reylo to ask permission, but their fic is so popular that I fear my request got buried in the comments. Ever-so-reylo, I love your work. If you object to this remix, please don’t hesitate to contact me.**

**Chapter One**

He doesn’t walk— _he stalks_. He shoulders past staff and patients alike with without so much as a backward glance. He barks orders, and then leaves, without waiting for acknowledgement. He has yet to learn the names of the nursing staff. He has a terrible bed-side manner. He’s moody and off-putting and brooding, _all the time._ And like most surgeons, he is arrogant, impatient, and a terrible communicator. Ridiculously Type A.

 _Of course,_ he is an Alpha.

How typical. Alphas tend to crowd out other designations in the field of medicine, especially surgery. Agatha has seen it all before; her years as a nurse had taught her how to deal with brilliant, egomaniacal physicians, and Ben Solo is a perfect specimen of the breed.

Agatha folds her arms and takes in another theatrical performance of arrogance starring Dr. Solo and his nemesis of the week, Nurse Tico.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Solo, but you don’t get to reserve pet technicians and nurses for yourself. I can’t and _won’t_ rearrange the schedule to suit your preference.” Rose Tico, a surprisingly tough and ambitious RN who seems too young to be in charge of surgical suite management, stands up to the croaker glowering down at her.

Being 6+’ tall, Solo towers over Nurse Tico, who can’t be much more than 5’ give or take an inch. Glaring down his long, prominent nose he hisses, “I’m the only surgeon here with a death rate under 3%. If your tight ass cared anything about the survival rating of this hospital,” his baritone voice grows louder with each word that follows, “you’ll give me whoever _the fuck_ I ask for!”

Christ. Agatha has no intention of getting involved, but this disrespectful bastard is testing her resolve. Fortunately, Rose Tico can hold her own. With a tone at once steely and subdued, she explains that the technician in question has already worked overtime this week. “You’re not gonna hold on to those impressive stats if you’re assisted by exhausted, overworked technicians, doctor.”

He responds by _growling_ as he skulks past Nurse Tico, bumping her shoulder as he passes.

Rose calls after him, “And I’ll thank you to watch your language! Don’t think I won’t to report you!”

Solo’s at the center of hospital rumors and speculation, thanks in part to his default petulance, in part to the scar which runs down the length of his face, and in part to his legendary family heritage. He’s the son of Dr. Leia Organa, long time executive director on the board at John Hopkins. It’s also rumored that he has a checkered past and would never have gotten into medical school if it hadn’t been for his family connections. Half of the interns are madly in love, the other half scared shitless. And rightly so. Now that Agatha is starting the final year of her residency, she’s just glad she doesn’t work directly under him.

It’s her colleague, Poe Dameron, who had the dubious honor of introducing them when she first started.

“Have you met our new senior resident? Pulmonology,” Poe told Solo in that carefree manner of his, halfway through showing Agatha around the surgical clinic.

Solo was standing off to the side amidst a bustling clinic, scribbling something on a patient’s chart, still wearing a surgical cap over a mop of black curls smoothed back over the nape of his neck.

“No.” Solo didn’t bother to lift his eyes from the chart.

“Doctor Agatha Mead. She started a few days ago, finishing her residency with us after two years at...Seattle Swedish, was it?” He paused for her confirmation nod, “She’s working under Skywalker now. Agatha, this is Doctor Ben Solo. He’s one of our best thoracic surgeons and Skywalker’s nephew.”

She stepped forward with her hand outstretched, “Nice to meet you, Doctor So—”

He interrupted without moving to take her hand, voice pitched low and dripping sarcasm, “Great. Another excellent internist—” He stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening as he inhaled, once, twice—the second time more deeply than the first—and then glared at her, his pupils dilating. Though his feet remained rooted to the ground, he somehow seemed to close in on Agatha—to position himself between her and Poe.

“You work with Luke?” he asked after a pause that felt too long, and it occurred to Agatha that in her earlier, somewhat distant observations of him, she had failed to catalogue his voice…or his scent. Both were deliciously dark and masculine. Alphas pretty much always smell good to unmated Omegas, but Dr. Solo smelled _especially_ good—warm and heady.

_What was the question?_

“Uh—Yes, I do.” She swallowed, her mouth had gone dry. And then…then she realized that Solo was staring at her with what could be contempt and that the silence was stretching a little too thin. Agatha froze, realizing that he must have picked up on her scent as well, despite the industrial-strength disinfectants that are ubiquitous in every hospital.

“It’s a waste of time studying under a washed-up old quack like Luke. _Omega_.”

She recoiled, at once stunned by his disparagement of her mentor and angry, too, that he’d publicly revealed her designation. Fortunately, Poe is a friend, and was already aware of her status, but she had been careful to suppress her scent and other Omega markers. She knows better than to advertise it at work. It draws unwelcome attention. 

Agatha stepped into the challenge, squaring her shoulders and meeting his eye. “How so, _Alpha_?”

Solo’s nostrils flared, and Agatha realized the crucial miscalculation—after centuries of oppression and disenfranchisement, most Omegas try not to advertise their designation. But for Alphas…their greatest pleasure is being reminded of what they are. 

The odor intensified, musky and rich and—this guy was obviously an asshole. Agatha might have been tempted to punch him right in the middle of that giant nose of his, except that some stupid, ridiculous, Omega instinct inside her wanted to soothe his aggression instead.

_Why not sweep one of those curls behind his ear? Show him how gratefully you’ll follow his lead?_

Solo’s pager went off with a loud vibration, staving off any further embarrassing impulses. He broke eye contact as he pulled it from his pocket to read.

Pinning Agatha with one last look, he turned to leave, “Excuse me.“

She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until he was out of sight.

“Well. That went well.” Poe crossed his arms and arched an eyebrow at her.

Without Solo clouding her senses with his scent, Agatha relaxed. “What a dick.”

“Yep,” Poe nodded cheerfully. “He’s also the best thoracic surgeon I’ve ever had the displeasure to meet. You might want to try and stay off his shit list, just so that he actually shows up when you request him for a consultation.” A short pause. “Though, that ship might have sailed.”

Agatha flushed and with a sigh, covered her face with her palm.

“There, there,” Poe patted her shoulder. “It’s not the end of the world. Solo hates everyone, anyway. He’s an equal opportunity asshole, you’ll see.”

* * *

After another week, Agatha remains unconvinced about the egalitarian hatred of Ben Solo. She mentally collects the evidence as she settles onto one of the bunks in the on-call room.

She’d caught him rolling his eyes or even snorting derisively when she’d asked for consultations, he openly refers to her as a FLEA (hospital slang for—‘fucking little esoteric asshole”), and then there was that _very_ inappropriate exchange of opinions in front of the entirety of the nursing staff:

The patient in question was a teenage boy suffering from Bronchiectasis. Ben Solo might be good in the OR, but he sucks when it comes to people skills. The parents requested a different surgeon after the pre-op examination. The boy had been in and out of hospital beds for the last eight months and after meeting Dr. Solo, they had wanted their son in the hands of someone “more caring.” While Agatha really had tried to assure them of Solo’s surgical skill, in the end she sympathized with their reservations, and put in the request to Nurse Tico the day before the surgery.

The result was a colorful protest to the change in the schedule, with Solo screaming alternately at both Agatha and Rose. She’d stood up to him, arguing for a patient’s right to emotional support, less effectively than she’d have liked. In the end, Solo threw the chart in her face before storming off, “Congratulations, you’ve just _dramatically_ reduced his odds of survival.”

Yep, she’s pretty sure she’s at the top of Solo’s shit list _._

She rolls over on her side, trying to put him out of her mind so she can rest. _It doesn’t matter_ , she reminds herself. His abusive outbursts she can handle. She’d been a nurse for a few years before earning her MD and has more experience dealing with difficult, or in his case, obnoxious personalities than the other residents. Not to mention that being an Omega and a female in the field of medicine…well, Agatha is no pushover. 

But that _scent_. The irresistible way he smells to Agatha, is completely, deplorably, _wasted_ on Solo. The paradoxical wish to _be close_ to a complete prick of a co-worker makes her feel like every pathetic Omega cliché she can think of. It makes her cringe with self-loathing, and damn it, she resents him for it.

Yep. Ben Solo is the absolute _worst._

Judging from Solo’s efforts to keep space between them, he does _not_ share her instinctual desire for proximity. He’d gone so far as to retreat to the opposite side of any room she’d entered. At first, she assumed he was just being a pompous ass. But after more observation, he must find her scent overwhelming, to the point of wearing nausea over his routinely sullen expression.

This morning, while riding an elevator to the sixth floor, she noticed him trying to breathe with his mouth, as if he were about to gag, or something equally dramatic. Agatha tried to ignore it, but when someone stepped in on the fourth floor, she made a point of inching a little closer just to provoke him. She told herself that it had nothing to do with wanting to engulf herself in his scent in an enclosed space. No. Of course not. She was only doing it to punish him for being an insufferable prick.

_Choke on it, Solo._

She turns over in her cot again, shaking her head to banish all thought of him. Why waste so much headspace on an arrogant dick? She sighs, trying to force herself to get a few hours of sleep before the long night ahead. Friday nights are not good nights for on-call duty.

As she’s starting to drift off, she hears the door click open and someone enter the darkened space. Squeezing one eye open she recognizes the tall, dark silhouette as that of the insufferable prick she’s been ruminating over. He must be exhausted, because he doesn’t notice Agatha when he slumps onto the couch opposite the room with a long-suffering sigh. He stares ahead, pressing what Agatha now recognizes is bloody gauze over his right forearm. A good portion of his scrubs are stained dark brown with what is probably his own blood too. Agatha forbids herself from acknowledging how young and deceptively harmless his odd face looks when he’s at rest. She commands herself to shut her eyes again and pretend she’s asleep.

_Ah, crap._

“Well, well. What happened to you?”

He startles at the sound of her voice and for an instant, his eyes widen in an expression that looks a little like panic. Agatha can’t help but enjoy his discomfort--she’s petty like that. She sits up and states the obvious, “You’re bleeding.”

Solo shrugs those expansive shoulders of his, "Something went wrong with the anesthesia. He got a hold of a scalpel and—he’s back in surgery, now.”

“You didn’t get it stitched up yet?”

Solo doesn’t answer at first, all his attention focused on pressing the gauze to his forearm. “It’s pretty busy—I couldn’t get anyone right away, and I needed to find somewhere _quiet_.”

Agatha purses her lips. “Why do I get the impression that no one was in a hurry to come help you? That’s what you get when you terrorize the staff.”

He doesn’t answer. Perhaps too tired to verbally spar with her, he hauls himself up off the couch to leave.

She swings her legs down off the bunk, “I can suture, you know.”

“I have no doubt.”

“Good. Then hold tight while I grab a suturing kit—”

“No.”

Agatha is taken aback. _Really?_ Arrogance aside, surely he can’t feel that repulsed by her? “It’s late—there’s currently one nurse who can suture on this floor, and she’s probably busy with patients. Unless you prefer to take care of this yourself...”

“I’m right-handed.”

“Fine. Then I’ll—"

“No. I’ll wait for the nurse. In my office.” He turns and heads out the door.

If Solo were any ordinary patient, she’d shrug and try to get back to her nap. Consent has not been given, it’s his prerogative to refuse treatment no matter how stupid the reason. But in this case, he’s _seriously_ pissing her off. She hops off the bunk and hurriedly slips her shoes back on with some vague notion of confronting him.

She catches up with him in the hallway. “What’s your problem, Solo? Don’t you need to get back to the OR?”

He snorts, “Don’t you have anything better to do? Be gone, _Omega_.”

Agatha is embarrassed by the instinct to nod, back away, and do exactly as the Alpha says. She even shifts her center of balance, prepares to step back. It’s a compulsion, and there’s not much Agatha can do about it, since she’s genetically predisposed to crave the pleasure of doing exactly as an Alpha demands. But it’s nothing more than instinct, and Omega or not, Agatha remembers that she knows better.

“Enough.” Fed up, Agatha plants her hand on Solo’s chest, and pushes him back until he’s sitting clumsily on the edge of an empty gurney someone had stashed there in the hallway. He’s twice as large as she is, and his muscles—he’s an Alpha, which means that his muscles have a firmness that Betas’ and Omegas’ can never really achieve, no matter the workout regime. Which in turn must mean that Agatha only succeeds in moving him because he is too stunned to think of doing anything about it.

His scent spikes, as intoxicating as ever, but she rallies again, reminding herself that she’s above this nonsense. “Listen, I get that you hate it, but we _have to_ be able to work together, so just…” _Just hold your nose for ten minutes._ “Just let me patch you up. Please? I won’t ever mention it again.” She holds up her right hand, “Scouts’ honor.”

He looks at her, working his jaw in that way Agatha’s starting to associate with him. His expression settles on what looks like a combination of resentment and resignation.

“Just—be quick.”

Agatha looks up and down the hallway, all examination room doors in this hallway are closed, which means that they’re occupied. Leaving Solo on the gurney, she opts to knock on the nearest closed door, apologizing to a disinterested patient waiting on an examination table with his phone in hand. She retrieves a suturing kit, more gauze, and pours some antiseptic, assuring herself that the spring in her step has nothing to do with the petty triumph of having bullied Ben Solo into compliance. Neither does it have anything to do with the pleasure of tending to a big, tall, hunk of an Alpha, either. _Of course not!_

When she returns to stand in front of him, putting on her gloves, she finds him staring at her every move with an eerily impassive gaze. When she wraps her hand around the back of Ben’s forearm, he jolts, pressing his mouth into a thin line. His flesh feels warm to Agatha, even through the latex.

“Awfully skittish, aren’t we?” she says, trying to lighten the mood.

“Just—Please.” Solo’s tone is mostly impatient, but underneath there is a hint of— _what is it?_ Agatha tries to pry what it is out of his eyes, but he looks away, staring instead at the nondescript hallway art hanging behind her.

“Fine,” she mutters.

_Whatever._

Agatha spends the following ten minutes working in silence, making a point of not looking up at him. When she’s finished with the last suture, he hops down from the gurney and hurries in the direction of his office, without even waiting for the bandage to cover the stitches.

 _Whatever_ , Agatha thinks again, ignoring the intensity of the scent he left behind.


	2. Chapter 2

After waiting for everyone else to funnel out of the conference room, Agatha shuffles toward the door bent over her phone. She’s enjoying a few pics of her daughter, Opal, who’s spending the summer with her father on the west coast.

Opal’s father was the only Alpha Agatha ever dated, and frankly the man who would one day become her co-parent should have been a brief footnote in her romantic history. If she hadn’t gotten pregnant during a shamelessly irresponsible night of drinks and deliciously rough sex with a dark-skinned, dark-eyed Alpha, she’d probably have trouble remembering his name by now. It was obvious that they weren’t compatible for anything long-term, he is just about as broody and imperious as Solo is, although more reserved in public. Now she’s stuck with him for life, a begrudged part of her family through their child.

After Opal was born, he’d earned her respect as a co-parent who took the responsibility seriously, even if she found him unbearable in every other way. When she’d finished the first three years of residency, he’d agreed to give her primary custody and let her move out of state as long as he got Opal every summer. It’s a fair arrangement, but it’s their first summer apart, and Agatha misses her baby already.

Still bent over the phone, she smacks right into Ben Solo, human brick wall. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t see y—”

“Watch it, will you?”

She's too distracted to take his rudeness personally today, “I said I’m sorry, I was—”

“Shit. Are you even on suppressants?”

 _Really_? That's not a thing any sane person would ask in a professional setting. Then again, she had to remember who she was talking to. Of course she’s on suppressants. Unlike the broody goon in front of her, she knows what it means to behave appropriately at work. “Do you have any social filter at all? Because you're due for a sensitivity training refresher.”

Solo steps—just a smidge—closer. He is wearing a black henley under his scrubs, and Agatha refuses to dwell on the way his biceps stretch it. She avoids the piercing stare he’s now directing at her, refusing to let the full foot in their height difference intimidate her.

“Are you on suppressants?” he repeats, somewhat more intensely, and this time there is that Alpha push behind the words, the one that is damned unfair and yet makes Agatha want to do exactly as he says. And maybe even thank him for the privilege. Damn Omega genes.

“Yes,” she grits out, at least managing not to whimper Yes, _Alpha_ —not her best moment, but she’ll take what she can get.

He nods, looking unhappy. “You might want to consider stronger drugs, then.”

 _This. Prick._ She sighs. It’s a mistake—God, he smells unbelievable. 

“Because we need to work together and I find it hard to do,” he adds.

“Then _you_ might want to consider stronger drugs—”

“I have.” He cuts her off. “I have been upping my dose every week until—” He stops abruptly. His hands –surgeon’s hands—sure and precise, which usually move with purpose and economy, are nervously smoothing the fabric of his scrubs down his torso. “I’m on blockers. The maximum dosage. And your scent—it’s still…” he swallows and presses his lips together before pushing out the word, “distracting.”

“Come on, Solo. There is no way my scent is so repulsive that it distracts you from your work.”

He looks at her like she just sprouted a second pair of eyes, “It’s not repulsive.”

Oh.

“You mean…”

_Oh, Lord._

Solo is almost wincing. Almost. He looks very pained. “Yes.”

“So… not—not bad?”

He squeezes his eyes shut and keeps them closed, “Believe me—it’s bad.”

Her stomach flutters and her limbs tingle. He’s still loathsome, why should she feel so relieved? Shake it off. “I’m s—” she catches herself before apologizing. “I… I think it’s you. The other Alphas haven’t complained.”

“What other Alphas?” Solo asks derisively.

“You haven’t noticed that medicine employs a much higher ratio of Alphas to the general population?” Agatha has worked with plenty of unmated Alphas, and she has treated numerous Alpha patients, and no one ever complains about her scent. “And I’m not the only Omega working here. There’s Mark, and that woman who comes in for consultations from gerontology, and—” She bites her tongue, unsure if she’s just outed Omegas he hadn’t know about.

“The other Omegas are not a problem.”

“Why am I a problem, then?”

He studies her for a moment, his jaw shifting to press his lips into a crooked frown. “I don’t know.”

Then again, maybe he does know. And maybe Agatha knows, too, because it’s not as if he doesn’t smell better than the other Alphas do, which is why she can’t meet his eyes when she confesses, “I’m already on maximum dosage.”

Solo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fuck,” she thinks he mutters.

He’s probably over-reacting. It’s not like this is going to be a real problem. She’s not going to drag him into a rut—not as long as she is on suppressants. They’re foolproof. So if they find each other—distracting—yeah, well, they just need to deal with the discomfort. Alphas and Omegas work together all the time, right?

“Is there anything I can do to, uh, help?” she asks, not realizing the potential innuendo until it’s too late. He lowers his hand and looks at her again, lips slightly parted, a spike of pheromones lighting up the air between them. Her traitorous body reacts instantly, starting to prepare for something that—Oh no, not going to happen.

Of course, Solo picks up on it, nostrils flaring as he leans in staring at her mouth. Agatha steps back, and her body—objects to the distance between them.

“I didn’t mean _that_. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” he repeats, with an inflection that sounds vaguely disappointed—though it could just be Agatha’s imagination playing up. All systems are not nominal.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” Now he’s stepping back, too. “Listen, just—just keep taking your suppressants. I’ll think of something. Or… someone.”

It’s not until he’s gone that it occurs to Agatha to wonder what he meant by ‘someone’.

* * *

“You guys probably just have really great chemistry, that’s all.” Poe is grinning. Really, no one who derives so much joy from Agatha’s misfortunes should be allowed to call himself her friend. “I mean, Solo is an Alpha and you are an Omega. It’s simple biology.”

“You’re an Alpha, too,” Agatha mutters into her cafeteria soup, unfolding a paper napkin.

“He’s taken,” Finn doesn’t bother looking up from his laptop, busy with who knows what. Agatha knows he works with Community Outreach for the Public Health Department, but she still has no idea what Finn actually does at work, except that just about every time they gather in the hospital cafeteria, Finn brings his laptop along.

Poe blows an air kiss at him and Finn pretends to catch it and stick it to his cheek, all while continuing to type with his right hand. Agatha would really like to roll her eyes, but she’s charmed despite herself.

“It’s so frustrating. We hate each other.” She doesn’t approve of the whininess in her voice, but then again, there are lots of things Agatha doesn’t like but can’t help. Ben Solo is only the latest, most unwelcome addition.

“Oh—it doesn’t mean anything. I told you, I’m pretty sure Solo hates everyone. So either he never gets laid, or he’s learned to divorce fucking from liking.” Poe cocks his head, pensive. “I’m honestly not sure which one it is. Would be curious to find out.” His dart up at her, pointedly.

“You’re not helping.” Agatha sighs and leans back in her chair. “He said he’d take care of it. He said he’d… think of someone.”

“Ah.” Poe nods. “He probably just means that he’s going to try to fuck this thing out of his system with someone else,” he explains, unfazed.

“Wait—Like... another Omega?”

“Maybe. Or—literally anyone else. Before I was mated, I did it all the time. Now when there’s an Omega who smells really good to me, I just save it all up for when I go home to Finn.” He winks at Agatha, “He’s actually happy about it. Right, babe?”

Finn doesn’t look up, nor does he look particularly happy. “Sure.”

“It’s just—it’s an Alpha thing. We can’t help it. I mean, it’s also an Omega thing I’m sure. No?”

Not really. Or not as far as Agatha would know, since the one time she’d dated an Alpha now feels like a million years ago, back in med school. Her subsequent status of single parenthood and her internship ate up all her free time and dissolved even the most evanescent hope for meaningful social activities. Like holding friendships with non-co-workers. Or dating. Or, you know...getting laid.

Agatha refuses to subscribe to the ‘all Alphas are assholes’ school of thought, but she’s never been fond of most of the Alphas she’s known, either—except for Poe. Yes, she’s biologically programmed to be compatible with them. Yes, they smell nice. Yes, having one around can be pleasant and comforting, but so are cats, films and cold beers. And those comforts are way less likely to try controlling or possessing her—except for maybe the cats. Overall, way more worthy of her time and attention.

Then again, no one ever smelled quite as good as—

“Hey,” something occurs to her. “You—The whole getting, um, turned on because an Omega is around… it doesn’t happen with us, right?”

He raises his eyebrows, “Well, as a matter of fact…”

Agatha leans back, horrified, and Poe’s face splits into a grin. “Nah, just kidding. Mated Alphas aren’t as sensitive, and your scent is so suppressed I can barely detect it. Most of the time you smell as plain as flour. As boring as the common cold. As dull as— ”

“Ok, ok. I get it.”

“I gotta say, though, I’m really enjoying seeing Solo doing his best not to breathe when you’re in the room. Almost makes me like the guy. Relatable, or something.”

“He doesn’t have to. I mean, he smells good to me, too, but you don’t see me being all dramatic about it and—”

“Non-Alphas have no empathy! You guys don’t get how rough those hormonal impulses can be on us. Think about the last time you experienced road rage or something. Like a time when you were really, aggressively, pissed off. How easy is it to just, get over it or calm down in that moment?”

She shrugged her shoulders in concession. She could see his point, kind of.

“Now imagine tying all that aggressive energy to your sex drive and mix in plenty of social shaming for it. It’s _not_ easy. Especially when some non-Alpha is chanting, ‘Just breathe past it.’ I mean, can you imagine—”

“Babe. Babe!” Finn interrupts him, “You’re starting to sound like an aggro-apologist.”

“What? No I’m not, I’m just calling—”

“Babe.” Finn shakes his head and gestures discreetly toward the older couple leering at them from one table over.

“PC fascist.” Poe tosses a crumpled up napkin at Finn and it bounces right off his chin and into his water.

“Oh you are so dead!” Finn exclaims as he hoists the offending cup of water to be used as a mock projectile

“Kids! Pipe down,” Agatha intervenes through her laughter. “God I can’t take you two anywhere!”

Now that Finn’s attention is conclusively broken from his laptop, he offers a horrible idea, “Why not just break the sexual tension and hook up?”

Agatha, who had been sipping her coffee now spurts half her drink onto her meal. He can’t be serious. She stops and thinks it over as she recovers. Since her daughter’s birth, dating takes too much out of her. Her few attempts over the past few years have felt like a waste of time and precious energy on friendly, attractive people who…don’t really interest her. And those that do pique her interest, on an instinctual, enticingly sensual level…are complete pricks.

“No, I don’t really date. Especially not Alphas.”

Poe stares at her, puzzled. “Why not?”

“Because.” It really should be obvious, “I’d rather not. I like Betas better.”

Finn beams at that statement, “Who doesn’t?” he cocks an eyebrow in a smug smile.

Poe’s eyes narrow and then widen, as if hit by some sudden realization. “Oh my God! You’ve never been with an Alpha!”

“Are you seriously assuming the only way she could prefer Betas is if she’s an Alpha virgin!?”

Agatha flushes, but doesn’t have to reply as Finn and Poe distract each other with a tug-o-war in scathing sexual banter. Instead she sips what’s left of her coffee and enjoys watching the two of them and how oblivious they’ve become to the disapproving looks they’re getting from other diners. She had been with an Alpha, once. His demanding lead in bed had been hot. But of course, he turned out to be a controlling asshole in the long run. No amount of good sex is worth that treatment. At least she has a beautiful little human to show for it. And at least the macho asshole turned out to be a decent person once he gave up on trying to force her to play “mates” with him. She shrugs. No regrets.

Explaining all this seems like a lot of effort, though, so Agatha shakes her head and finishes her coffee as the cute couple before her debates designation politics in a surprisingly flirty way.

Poe seems to remember why they’re arguing and turns his attention back to her, “Agatha. You need to correct that. ASAP. Stat. Immediately. Tonight.”

“What the Alpha thing? Yeah...No.”

“I’m serious. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“You mean, being looked down on and constantly treated with condescension and superiority?”

Finn sighs and leans forward to weigh in, “Listen. I get it. Alphas have a collective historical responsibility in the systemic oppression of Omegas—and Betas, too. Trust me, I hold them accountable and will call them on their bullshit whenever I can. However—” he lowers his voice, “—the knotting is fucking amazing, and I’m not even biologically wired to enjoy it the way you are.”

Poe adds, “It’s the 21st century. You can have sex with an Alpha, love it, and it can happen on your terms.”

Finn continues, “Believe me, not all of them are douchebags and it’s usually worth it.” He flinches at the mock punch on the arm from Poe.

Yeah but Solo is the ultimate douchebag.

“I don’t know. It seems…like a lot of work. Shouldn’t I spend the effort on someone I can see myself growing old with?”

“Agatha, Agatha. Agatha.” Poe says in only a slightly condescending tone, “You’re so overthinking this. You’re a doctor, you know the biology behind it. It’s all about pheromones—it doesn’t matter whether you have diverging opinions on politics or support different sports teams. You’re fucking, not getting married. It doesn’t require any effort at all if you find an Alpha who’s interested. And nearly any unmated Alpha will be.”

Agatha sits back in her chair, considering. What Poe and Finn are suggesting seems… unlikely. When Agatha is feeling generous about her appearance, she considers herself an ample, if unorthodox beauty, for someone her age. When she is feeling insecure, she’d describe herself as frumpy… and unsophisticated. She’s never really been one to turn heads. Then again, she's never really had any trouble find willing partners, either.

She guesses Finn's Alpha-Omega reasoning makes sense. The fact that her thoughts have been dwelling on an epic asshole, like Ben Solo, proves hormones can be powerful. Hell, the idea has merit just in feeling a bit less… a bit less lonely. Living a little and maybe breaking the sexual tension will make it easier at work, as long as they keep really clear boundaries between them. This—this might be exactly what she needs, no matter that she wouldn’t have let herself consider it until less than an hour ago. Hell, less than ten minutes ago.

She inhales deeply. “You’re right. Probably I am. Overthinking this, I mean.”

Finn returns to his laptop. “You definitely are.”

Agatha nods, playing with an idea that is so titillating and wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

Two days later, Agatha’s off a thirteen-hour workday and heading home when she sees them in the hallway.

Phasma is standing next to Solo—she’s so tall, why are all surgeons so tall?—showing him something on a clipboard. She points at it every few words, and he is nodding, absorbed in the conversation. For once, he’s not rolling his eyes, or sneering at something someone is saying—okay, fine, at something Agatha is saying.

Phasma leans into him and adds something conspiratorially, something witty, judging from the way her lips curve upwards. Solo lifts his head to look at Phasma, and—it’s been weeks since Agatha moved here, since she started working in this hospital, yet she’s seeing his smile for the very first time.

Agatha’s heart thuds in her chest. He looks handsome. Really, really handsome.

Shit.

She resolves to embrace the terrible idea she’s been mulling over since that lunch with Finn and Poe.

* * *

She decides to wait until they are completely alone, which takes days, giving Agatha time to overthink her stupid, delicious, harebrained idea about a billion times. Every day she loses her nerve and then...then she and Ben will end up in the elevator together, or she’ll catch him giving her a side look, or worse—he’ll accidentally brush against her as they are consulting about a patient, and Agatha cannot help but remembering Finn’s words.

 _Biologically wired_ , he'd said. _You don’t know what you’re missing._

In the end, Agatha resigns herself to go look for him in his office. She spends about thirty-five minutes agonizing over her lack of makeup, and how lanky her hair looks today, and whether it would be better to do this with her lab coat on or off. Then she makes peace with the fact that the one attractive quality she possesses in Ben’s view is her smell, and that he probably wouldn’t look at her twice if it weren’t for that.

She heads off in her scrubs, pulling her hair up in a ‘mom bun.’ She tells herself that it has nothing to do with the fact that it frees the glands on each side of her neck. They are minor scent glands, anyway, and she is perfectly decent. By all standards.

When she knocks, the, “Come in” is immediate. Inside the small office, Ben’s smell is so thick that Agatha wonders if this is how it feels, being hit by a bus. Something inside her pulses, empty as a drum, and she presses her legs together.

She really hopes this conversation goes well, because… _Because._

“Hi.”

“Who died?” Solo asks uninterested, keeping his eyes on the monitor.

“What? No one today, I hope.”

He continues typing, “What is it, then?”

“Can we talk? For a minute?”

He lifts suspicious eyes toward her, “Why?”

If Agatha didn’t know better she’d think this Alpha—who’s a foot taller, and twice as large—is scared of her. Or something equally un-Alpha-y.

“Well,” Agatha gathers her courage, “if you give me a minute, I’ll tell you.”

A pause. “Fine,” he says, swiveling to face her, sulking impatiently as usual.

Agatha steps in and makes to close the door behind her.

“What are you doing?”

“Um… closing the door?”

“No—you can’t.” There is a hint of alarm under the steel of his tone.

“It’s kind of a delicate matter. Trust me, we’ll want the privacy.”

“And I’m pretty sure we don’t want to be in an enclosed space….Trust _me_.” He says it using his Alpha voice; Agatha is tempted to apologize and back out. Then she remembers why she’s here and powers through. Before he can protest, Agatha steps in and closes the door behind herself. She immediately leans back against it, palms flat on the smooth wood. Solo just stares at her, wide-eyed.

“Please,” he says, calm and serious.

“It’ll be fine. Give me just five minutes. I—I’ll stay over here, out of your way.”

He squeezes his eyes shut for a handful of seconds. When he opens them again, his expression has hardened. “You were forewarned.”

Agatha nods, and takes a deep breath. His scent is still overwhelmingly powerful in the small office, and it’s also beginning to mix with hers, which makes her chest throb sweetly—Yep, he has a point. Better make this quick.

“Do you remember that thing we talked about?”

Solo rolls his eyes. “Yes. The thing. Of course.” He turns back to his monitor.

“In the conference room.”

“Is this about your patient with the bronchial inflammation? I told you, we can’t operate until—”

“No.” Agatha swallows, “No, it’s about… the sex.”

She has his full attention. He swivels in his chair facing Agatha again, eyes widening. “What?”

“That conversation we had about—”

“I am very sure you and I have never talked about sex.”

“You said—you said you…” _Like the way I smell. Maybe want to sleep with me?_ Though, to be fair, Agatha is now realizing that he never said any of these things. That she might have catastrophically misunderstood their whole conversation. Maybe this isn’t her best idea after all.

“You said you find me distracting.”

Solo’s expression closes off, and he clears his throat. “I am positive that the word sex was not uttered once over that conversation.”

_Right._

“Yes. I mean—no, it wasn’t, but…” Agatha takes a deep breath, “It could have been.”

Agatha can’t read anything in his face—absolutely nothing.

“It could?”

“Yeah. If you—if you were interested. Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Hypothetically.”

A pause, too long. “You made it clear that you weren’t. Interested.”

Agatha thinks back to their conversation. She didn’t quite—she doesn’t believe she ever said she wasn’t. Yes, maybe she also didn’t say she was, but what does he expect her to—and he was the one who said he’d go find someone else, anyway.

“I wasn’t, then. But—I am now…”

It occurs to her that what she is saying could be vastly misinterpreted. Maybe he thinks she’s being a typical clingy Omega, trying to find a mate to ensnare and tie herself to. Not that all Omegas are clingy, not by any means, but that’s the stereotype, and Agatha doesn’t care to be the one who perpetuates it. Especially with Ben Solo, who’d probably rather perform cardio-thoracic surgery on himself without anesthesia than voluntarily spend time in Agatha’s company. Unless what they do in that time only involves—

“I’m not saying we’d be dating or anything like that, of course.”

His expression turns into something like a scowl. “Of course,” he repeats.

“We would just… You know. I mean, it sounds like we’re compatible.”

“Compatible.”

“Yes. And I haven’t… Not in a while. So it would be convenient if—”

“I am.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

 _What?_ “You are… what?”

“Interested. I am very interested.”

Solo stands from his chair, and while he doesn’t move, there’s a fierceness to his features that triggers her hands to close into fists.

“Oh. Good. Good, um, so am I.” God. Could this be any more awkward? Could she be more awkward? Could Ben be any less helpful? He’s just standing there, staring a hole into her and—

“Good.”

“Okay, so. How do you propose we… um…” Agatha makes to run a hand through her hair, and then remembers that it's tied up. “I guess we could meet somewhere, outside work, and—”

_Or not._

She’s not sure where the kiss comes from, but it’s nonetheless there, Ben’s lips on hers after he—he must have crossed the space between them, he must have, but Agatha didn’t see him. Doesn’t matter, because her legs somehow know what to do, since they’re wrapped around his hips. He’s helping her, hands under her ass to lift her up and press her tighter against himself—

_Close, how are we so close all of a sudden?_

He groans, or maybe she does, and he must feel how wet she is, even through her scrubs and his scrubs and all the layers underneath. He must be able to smell it, as open as he has her, as parted, all that delicious, steady pressure on her cunt as his palms drag her even closer. Distantly, Agatha wishes her body would show a modicum of restraint, but his tongue, the taste is—it’s perfect. He always smelled good—not generic-Alpha, biologically-salient good, but phenomenal. Now, though, now he’s everywhere, inside her and outside and seeping through her skin and soaking her brain and—

“Here. I can fuck you here.”

It sounds like a great idea. A fantastic idea. She pulls him down again, to her mouth, though she lets him stray to the scent gland on her throat when he seems to prefer that, when he moans as he licks the one on the left and then suckles on it and then one hand slips underneath her scrubs and drifts upwards to her breast and—

The jarring rattle of a cart in the hallway yanks Agatha out of the moment.

“Okay, maybe—Solo, maybe not here…”

He shuts her up with another kiss, and it’s as if Agatha can feel the pheromones entering her bloodstream. This is— _too much_. Unsustainable. It’s crazy, that they managed to avoid this, this, for weeks. They are barely breathing now.

“You’ve been ruining my life since—”

“Solo—Ben, please—” Agatha plants her hands on his shoulders. Alpha muscles. Everywhere. So hard. So. Much.

“Shhh. Shh, I’ve got you, I—” He bites her on the neck, lightly, his erection dragging against her, and for a second Agatha thinks, _knows,_ that she’s going to come—just like this, just like—

“We have to stop—Ben—”

He's not listening to her, not even close, too busy smelling her and licking her and biting her everywhere that is accessible, too busy pressing her further into the door and fusing their bodies together and making her—even more wet. How is that even possible? But there are people, and this is a hospital, and it’s the middle of the day, and this is not the place, and he needs to—

 _Stop_.

Some deep-rooted instinct has Agatha lift her hands to the column of his neck, her fingers pushing through his longish black hair, wrapping both hands around it. Ben stills in the act of sucking at her collarbone, just long enough that Agatha can push his head back. Catch his eyes with hers.

Seamless and ancient, something inside her takes over. Agatha presses a soft kiss into his cheek and runs her thumbs back and forth over both his glands. He looks immediately soothed—more than that, spellbound. Utterly captivated by her touch.

“Agatha,” he whispers, short of breath.

She kisses his cheek again. “We can’t do it here. But—later. Whenever you want, Alpha.”

It seems to work. Ben nods, and gently lets go of her, disentangling her thighs from his hips until her feet touch the ground, his grip soft and lingering. He takes one—small—step away from her and then just stands there, chest heaving, and Agatha—she has saved lives, and held her own in a world that never gave her any advantage, but in all her years she has never, ever felt such power.

“We're... There are people…” she starts to explain and Ben nods. For the first time since she met him, his expression isn’t impatient, or annoyed. Instead he seems… at peace.

“Yes.”

He reaches for her, and for a moment Agatha thinks that he’s going to draw her to him again, and then yes, they are going to fuck in this office and the entire floor, the entire hospital will know, and who cares? But his hand reaches around her, and his palm, heavy and warm, comes to rest on her superior trapezius, rubbing rhythmically through her clothes.

Agatha stills.

Her world stops. Everything, every single nerve in her body seems to reroute—to center on the wet, thrumming pulse fluttering between her legs.

“I’m going to lick this,” he promises, voice low and steady.

Agatha can’t breathe. The scent glands on her neck, they are sensitive, have to be—but the mating gland on her upper back… _That’s the one._

The one whose existence Agatha tries to forget about, because it’s just too much sometimes. There is so much tied to it—a whole host of shameful, forbidden feelings and fantasies that she’d rather not linger on. Just like that, with a few words, Ben manages to position himself at the center of every single one of them.

Or maybe he was there all along. 

“Yes,” she says without thinking, staring into his eyes.

He nods, and Agatha can smell how pleased he is. How much she pleased him, with just one word.

He leans further into her, his nose dragging in the spot between Agatha’s throat and her collarbone. She’s so transfixed by the sensation that she doesn’t realize the main intent of his gesture—reaching past her to open the door, and let some pheromone-free air into the office.

It helps dilute the pressure. By the time Ben straightens and takes a step back, Agatha can almost think again. His hair is messy, sticking up on the left side of his head, and he has never looked more beautiful.

“Later, then?”

Agatha exhales, wishing his hands were still on her.

“Yes. Later.”

* * *

‘Later’ turns out to be much later than Agatha expected—and judging from the way Solo looks at her during staff meetings, much later than he wants too.

First, Agatha is on call for two weekends in row, and two weeks ago she wouldn’t have cared a whit, but now the fact that they are on non-overlapping shifts seems like a cruel joke. Then Ben has two intensive, 4 am surgeries scheduled in a row. Then Poe gets sick, and Agatha has to cover for him, and he might give off the impression that he breezes effortlessly through life, but Agatha’s workload quadruples instantly.

Agatha finds herself thinking that she will really, truly go mad, when she gets an email from the hospital HR rep:

**From: Human Resources**   
**To: Agatha C. Mead, MD**   
**Re: Consensual Liaison Agreement**

_This is a reminder that all hospital employees who socialize intimately outside of work must submit a signed Consensual Liaison Agreement for hospital records. Please see attached._

_Regards, Armitage Hux_

BEN SOLO, MD, ATTENDING, INPATIENT DEPT, and AGATHA C. MEAD, MD, SENIOR RESIDENT, HOUSE STAFF, hereby notify St. Marks Medical Center that we have entered into a voluntary and mutual consensual social relationship.

In entering into this relationship, we both understand and agree to the following:

  * Our personal relationship is voluntary and consensual.
  * We are both free to end the relationship at any time.
  * If the social relationship should end, we both agree that we shall not allow the end of this relationship to negatively impact our job performance.
  * We will act professionally in the workplace without public display of affection.
  * We have received and reviewed St. Marks Medical Center's sexual-harassment policy, a copy of which is attached.
  * We acknowledge that the social relationship between us does not violate St. Marks Medical Center 's policies and that entering into the social relationship has not been made a condition or term of employment.



Click here to submit your digital signature.

_Oh lord._ This is mortifying.

It makes sense. Even in the most politically correct of workplaces, there are cases of unwanted aggression from Alphas toward Omegas, and Betas too. Then when she thinks about it, she’s heard of plenty of stalking cases perpetrated by Omegas seeking to tie themselves to a particular Alpha too. This document absolves the hospital, and Solo, an infamously temperamental Alpha, from liability—totally reasonable.

But the thought of that snide, unlikeable bureaucrat having full knowledge that Agatha and Ben are becoming fuck-buddies, makes her stomach turn. Then again. The thought of Solo walking into the HR office to request the document is ludicrous enough to off-set the queasiness. What she’d have given to have witnessed that little meeting…

She squeezes her eyes shut and reaches for the mouse. If he can stomach the awkward situation, so can she. Might as well bite the bullet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Reminder: For the beginning of this fic, the wonderful smutty bits are more appropriated than remixed. You can see how Ever-so-reylo inspires!**


	4. Chapter 4

Agatha’s phone vibrates a message alert.

Ben <Tonight?>

Agatha is supposed to call Skywalker tonight for an overdue progress evaluation. Also, there are about twenty papers she should really read if she wants to keep practicing evidence-based medicine—and she hasn’t done laundry since… she’s not sure since when, but she’s down to her last three pairs of underwear, and they’re all in neon colors.

None of it matters.

Agatha <Tonight.>

Ben <My place or yours?>

Agatha thinks about it for a moment. On the one hand, her place would make her feel safer. More at ease, for sure. On the other, she doesn’t like the idea of a man in her home, even when her little one isn’t there. Introducing a man into her life is a tricky proposition for single mothers; this particular man seemed like the last one on the planet who’d do what it takes to earn _that_ trust. Besides, her apartment is small enough that it would get saturated with Ben’s scent in a matter of hours—and there’s no telling how long it would take to get that out. Agatha’s not that sure that she wants to risk being reminded of Ben’s existence for weeks on end, especially if the whole thing goes…poorly.

Agatha <I prefer yours>

Ben texts her his address.

Ben <Should be home around 8>

Agatha’s hand tightens around her phone. _Here goes nothing._

* * *

She’s surprised to find that Ben lives less than ten minutes from her apartment, in a house as un-surgeon-like as they come. It has a too-cluttered porch, and a paint job that sorely needs a touch-up, and real, actual signs of a human living in there. There is even a cat in the yard—a beautiful calico, who looks up with mild interest as Agatha parks in front of the garage, then goes back to lazily licking her paw while Agatha takes a few seconds to collect herself before ringing the doorbell. She wonders absently if the cat is Ben’s, or a stray, or just the neighbor’s pet. Probably the latter since Ben doesn’t strike her as the nurturing type.

He comes to the door and—it seems impossible, but Agatha wonders if she underestimated the effect they have on each other.

She knows that something must have happened between the time Ben motioned her inside and the moment she found herself pressed into his mattress, his smell so overwhelming that Agatha can feel the slick trickle down her inner thigh. There are vague, fragmented memories—leaving her purse and car keys on a flat surface just inside the entrance; telling Ben that no, she doesn’t want anything to drink, thank you; nodding her permission as he cupped her nape in his large hand, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed heavily.

_Yes. Yes, you can kiss me. And everything else, too._

And then—now. This. Ben, fully dressed on top of her, naked. Spreading her wide open, holding both her hands above her head— _Alphas. Alphas and their delusions of control_ —his mouth obsessed with the pounding glands on each side of her neck. His jeans must be damp with her wetness. He should be disgusted. She just wishes she could feel him, skin to skin, and he would be so warm.

But no.

Earlier she had fumbled with the fly of his pants, and he laughed—he _actually laughed_ at her.

_If I take them off, it’s over. Let’s make this last a little._

He travels down her body, holding her wrists with one hand, while the other worries at the nipple he’s not licking. She flinches at the discomfort, even though she stopped breast feeding two years ago, her nipples have become permanently oversensitive. Taking the hint, he moves further down her body; his grip leaves white imprints on her waist, and his mouth sucks a bruise onto her hipbone. Finally, he spreads apart the lips of her vulva to get better access.

“The scent of you. I thought I was going mad.” He licks at her, a wide, broad stroke that has her arch against his grip and make an animalistic sound. She is going to die. Here. Now. And she doesn’t even mind. “I thought about quitting. I thought about fucking you anyway, no matter what you said.”

Lovers have gone down on Agatha before, and she never much cared for it. It made her too self-conscious, but this—it’s like he’s trying to consume her, in the way he licks her inner thighs dry, sucks on her cunt as if to take her inside himself. And Agatha—she wants it, too, _whatever the Alpha asks for_. Her eyes are closed, but every once in a while she feels the bed shift, and she knows he’s touching himself, pumping his hips into the mattress, trying to alleviate the pressure. She wonders if it works. If it’s enough for him. It’s not for her, none of this is, and there is a sense of panic spreading inside her, a fear that nothing might ever be.

She considers begging him. Imploring him to stop immediately, to continue forever. The impulse dies on her lips when he presses a warm hand on her abdomen, grounding her, and suddenly the emptiness is almost bearable.

Almost.

Agatha moans.

“Shh. Omega.”

“I want to—”

“I know.” A kiss on the jut of her hipbone. “Me too. Shh.”

He is naked, too, the next time they kiss, somehow looking even larger than he does when dressed. Their scents are starting to meld together, impossible to tease apart, and suddenly Agatha begins to understand years of biology textbooks. Something _meant to be,_ that’s how this feels. Something right, bigger than Ben or Agatha.

He lifts his head from her throat to meet her eyes.

“No knotting, I assume?”

Addled as she is, it takes seconds for Agatha to understand the question; when she does, she has to pause, reach for whatever logic she has left. The idea of him knotting her should probably be upsetting to Agatha, if only because then she’d be stuck to Ben Solo and all his… Alphaness for an hour or so, and that’s just not something any rational part of her should want.

Except that Agatha really, really wants it.

Problem is, Agatha has no idea whether it’s something too intimate for whatever _this is_. All she can do is go by the little cues Ben is giving her. And he doesn’t seem particularly interested in knotting her, not judging by the carelessness of his tone, by the way he asked her like it’s already a done deal.

So Agatha swallows her disappointment and says, “Thank you.”

Ben nods, expression blank, as he sits up to unroll a condom onto his veined and purple cock. He leans back over her, dips down for a sweet, chaste kiss to her lips that feels jarring, considering that the head of his cock is already in line with her wet opening, already making room inside her.

“Ask me,” he tells her, voice husky but calm. “Ask me, Agatha.”

It’s stupid—it’s the kind of porn movie talk that Agatha would normally laugh at, except that it’s not, except Ben doesn’t sound cocky. He just sounds like he needs her to acknowledge this, or to consent one last time. Maybe it’s some kind of Alpha-Omega type of thing, because Agatha finds that she needs to say it just as much.

“Please, Ben.”

It feels so good, and she feels so full, and right now she could come just from this—just from the wet sounds, Ben sliding in and out, and hitting all her walls and driving her absolutely out of her mind. _Dazzling,_ this. Agatha hangs onto his shoulders and begins to move with him, trying to speed up the rhythm, trying to make this enough, make it more—

Ben stops, and she whines.

He chuckles, but it’s strained. One of his hands comes up to Agatha’s throat, fingers stroking one of her glands, pressing a finger into it. It subdues her, for a moment.

“You have to be quiet for a minute, or I’ll come.”

His shoulders are broad and slick with sweat, and Agatha can barely hold on.

“You can—It’s okay.”

“It’s not.” His breathing is shallow. “If I come, I knot. And if I knot, I won’t be able to go as deep—” he punctuates the word with a thrust— “as you need me to.”

 _I don’t care,_ she wants to say. The idea of him coming inside her seems like the solution to all of Agatha’s problems.

“Ben.” _Alpha._ She is begging. For… something. For him to continue, to hit that spot, to tell her what to do.

“I’m here.”

He really is. He contains her, and fills her up, and soothes her, and when her body snaps and her mind whites out he’s holding her close, balancing her, guiding her through it.

 _Alpha_ , she doesn’t say. _Alpha._

He loses it, then. He grunts, and bites her at the base of her throat, and then grunts again before pulling out just a bit the second before he comes, just enough that his knot doesn’t lock them together while he’s emptying into the condom, still deep inside her. When Agatha looks up, his face is scrunched up as if under great effort.

“Unreal,” he gasps when he can speak again. “This is unreal.”

She couldn’t agree more.

Agatha is still breathing hard, coming down from the rush of pleasure, when Ben turns her so that she’s laying on her stomach.

She should probably object, or at least ask what he thinks he’s doing, but her mind must have retreated into some sort of Omega space, because she has to bite her tongue to avoid thanking him profusely just for putting his hands and his smell on her.

He tugs at the condom, now heavy with viscous cum, and ties it off like a balloon--only an Alpha could produce so much in one go. Then he touches her, everywhere, in a way that seems to be more instinctual than premeditated. His eyes are entranced with her form, his breathing heavy and steady as he pushes her hair back from her face and runs his thumb over one of her neck glands. He entwines his fingers with hers and then licks the inside of her wrist. He rubs his bare cock on the place where her thigh meets her center, mixing the remnants of his cum with her slick. It must be Alpha behavior, Agatha thinks, drowsy. If knotting is off the table, this must be the next best thing. Pure Alpha biology, nothing but.

It stands to reason, then, that the fact that Agatha wants nothing but to lie bonelessly and feel his every move is some kind of Omega reaction to it.

Nothing but.

“You’re so beautiful,” he mumbles almost to himself, and Agatha reminds herself that he doesn’t really mean it, that it’s the pheromones—this odd, unexpected, off-the-charts compatibility. She knows better than to read anything into it, but still, something tense inside her relaxes. It’s as if her entire existence has been made better by the fact that this man, this Alpha, finds her worthy of being looked upon.

Ben leans forward, until his mouth is in line with her ear. “I’m going to fuck you again. Okay?”

 _Yes. Please. Whatever you want, Alpha._ Agatha nods silently into the pillow, and is surprised when Ben presses a soft kiss into her cheek.

“Thank you.”

She’s not sure she’s ever heard him say the words, before.

He uses his knee and his hand to open her thighs wider and she hears the snap of another condom. Then he just sinks in. His knot isn’t full anymore but it hasn’t quite gone down yet, and he can’t shove inside her as deep as Agatha senses he’d like. It doesn’t matter though, because his cock is as hard as it was earlier, and long enough, and the position affords him an angle that more than makes up for it. 

Pleasure floods Agatha, and she immediately clenches around him, muscles fluttering to keep him inside.

Ben leans on his palms and thrusts once, a handful of times, grunting in that deep way of his that makes Agatha’s body produce even more lubrication. The bed must be drenched by now. A complete disaster.

Exquisite.

When Ben bends to her, Agatha expects him to nip at her nape, or to focus on the scent glands on her neck. She hopes he will—it’s what brought her off earlier, the feeling of his teeth and his mouth and his cock on her, inside of her, overwhelming her, making her feel whole for—for what seemed like the first time. She is surprised, when his lips press into her left shoulder blade as his thrusts become slower and more shallow. This is good. This is incredible. She could live like this, in this precise moment, for—

She first feels his nose tracing her mating gland, and they both moan, both loud and both in surprise. Ben stills his hips, as deep into Agatha as he can possibly get at the moment, and when he speaks she can feel his warm breath, his full lips moving against the fragile skin of her gland.

“You won’t believe how much I’ve thought about doing this.”

A shiver of pleasure licks up Agatha’s spine, parting her lips. She probably wouldn’t, since she hasn’t let herself think about this, not at all.

He licks her, he licks her, there, and her “Oh,” sounds too reductive, too soft for what is going on inside her, for the barrage of fire across all of her nerve endings. He licks her again, with a deep guttural moan, his right hand stroking the side of her breast just roughly enough that she can feel it. And then he licks her once more, and this time he actually runs his teeth across the skin of her gland. All of Agatha’s internal muscles clench around him—except that he’s big, so big, there is nowhere for them to go, and then—it crashes on her.

Ben groans and stays still, allowing her to ride her orgasm. His cock—she couldn’t bear this, if he were any larger. And yet—it almost doesn’t seem to be enough. It’s as if something is missing, even as her entire body shakes with pleasure.

“That’s it. Good girl.”

He says the words against her gland, almost sweetly, and Agatha—Agatha is going to die. A wonderful, delicious death. Depraved, all of this. Filthy. Beautiful.

Ben waits until most of the aftershocks have subsided before leaning into her again and murmuring in her ear.

“You did good. Very good, Omega.”

He bites softly on her lobe, and Agatha thought, hoped she was finally done, but her cunt clenches once more as if trying to squeeze all the pleasure out of this. Out of him.

“I’m going to finish now, okay?”

Agatha nods blindly, and braces herself against the pillow.

* * *

She wakes up from a deep, dreamless sleep to something tickling the skin of her left cheek, and Agatha—being a reformed cat lady—knows what she’s dealing with well before opening her eyes.

“Hey, kitty.” She yawns.

Something meows in response and—it’s the calico, the one Agatha saw yesterday minding her business in Ben’s front yard when—

_Ben._

Agatha sits up in bed, fully expecting to find him next to her.

And yet, not surprised to find that he’s not.

His side of the bed is rumpled, cold to the touch when Agatha reaches out. Agatha pets the cat once, twice, and then a dozen times more when she starts purring. Then it occurs to her that it’s morning, and that she’s stark naked in Ben Solo’s bed, alone. A thrilling sense of uneasiness grows in her chest, and she slips out from behind the sheets—ouch, ouch, ouch, everything bloody hurts—to look for yesterday’s clothes and put them back on, minus the still damp underwear. To say that they are scattered is a vast understatement.

Once she’s decent she makes her way downstairs, kitty in tow. Agatha passes what is probably the sunniest living room in the history of bay windows, what looks like a den with three different couches, and finally enters a kitchen that is as wide as her whole apartment. Agatha notes with relief that the cat bowl is full—she’s not sure how Ben would react to her snooping around the kitchen to find his stash of Meow Mix.

_Ben._

“Ben?” she says tentatively, voice loud enough to carry. There is no answer. Agatha listens carefully for the sound of a shower running, or a TV. Of any presence at all in the house. There’s nothing but the relentless ticking of the kitchen clock.

He’s clearly not home.

Near the entrance, Agatha finds her purse and her phone—conspicuously devoid of messages from Ben. She knows he’s not supposed to be working today, so maybe he’s gone for a run, or to get coffee, or whatever it is that Ben Solo does on his mornings off. Kick puppies, maybe. Could be anything, since he's probably a very busy man.

Still, it’s telling that he didn’t bother waiting for Agatha to wake up. Or waking her up himself. Or texting her. Or… something. _Rude._

Not that it matters, Agatha tells herself. This was sex. Very good sex. Excellent sex.

But just sex.

She feels a wave of embarrassment at the idea of what he must have thought last night, when Agatha fell asleep next to him. Clingy Omega. Overstaying her welcome. Getting ideas.

The thought that he might have spent the hours until morning wishing Agatha was gone, and that he left his own house to escape her company—obliterates any lingering feeling of euphoria from last night, making Agatha absolutely miserable.

Stupid. Just— _stupid_. She’s a grown woman. She _knows_ better. Feeling disgusted with herself, Agatha pets the meowing cat one last time, and then lets herself out.

* * *

She sees him next two days later.

He’s wearing jeans (black) and a henley (black) and carrying a windbreaker (black—no, it’s actually dark gray, how daring of him) which probably means that he’s leaving work. He’s about to enter one of the elevators when he spots Agatha in the hallway—and surprises her by not scurrying away to avoid her. He steps away from the opening doors, and puts himself straight in Agatha’s trajectory, which means that he wants to talk to her, which means that… Agatha is not sure.

Probably something about a patient. This is fine. This is absolutely fine. Agatha tries to scrounge up a smile, fully knowing he won’t bother returning the favor.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

His voice. _God, his voice._ She has forgotten nothing, not one word that he has said to her that night. Not one.

“How are you?”

“Good.” A pause, which he makes use of to cross his arms in front of his chest. And then to uncross them. _Not very decisive for an Alpha,_ but Agatha can sympathize. This is uncomfortable. And weird. “You?”

“Good.”

He nods. “Good. Good.”

They don’t seem to be quite back to _before_ —before. The first few weeks, when they could barely stand to be civil to one another. But they’re not acting like people who recently had sex so many times that Agatha lost count, either. Then again, he left his house at 6AM so he wouldn’t have to deal with her the following morning, so maybe this level of awkwardness is exactly what they deserve.

“Do you—are you going home?”

“I am.”

“Okay. I won’t keep you.”

Ben nods. There is a pause that stretches too long, and—

“Okay. I’ll see you around, then.” He presses his lips together. “Bye, Agatha.”

He’s almost walked past her when the words rush out of her mouth, and Agatha will later reflect that it might just be the way he says her name, that compels her to speak.

“I was wondering if—would you like to, maybe—do that aga—”

“Yes.”

_Did he say—yes. He said yes?_

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Yes to…?”

“Yes.”

Agatha’s exhaled laugh is pure relief, “Do you maybe need to think about it?” she teases, and—since when does Agatha tease him?

“No.” Ben’s response is dead serious, “I’ve thought about it already.”

There are a million implications to his words. Each one is—delicious.

“Okay. Good.”

“Good.”

Great conversationalists, the both of them.

Ben looks down to his shoes, and then back up to Agatha. “When are you off tonight?”

“Ten.”

“Can you—Do you want to come over?”

She really shouldn’t. She needs sleep, and she still hasn’t done most of her laundry, and also, maybe—this is stupid, but just maybe she should play a little hard to get. Not that Agatha’s deluding herself that Ben cares for her in any way, shape, or form that doesn’t involve sex, and he did make her feel like shit the other morning. Agatha should probably return the favor and pretend that there’s something else she’d rather do. That she has a life.

And yet.

“I’d love to.”

* * *

Agatha never spends the night again.

She learns that it’s best to leave immediately, right after they’re finished. Waiting longer is tempting, because…well, because he is so unbelievably warm and beautiful and drop-dead sexy. But it’s counterproductive, since leaving the warmth of Ben’s body and the combination of their scents on the sheets becomes significantly harder as time goes by. Ben clings to Agatha for as long as she decides to stay, usually arranging her so that she’s laying on top of him while he’s still hard inside her—an unsatisfying, crude approximation of what would happen if he allowed himself to knot inside her. But he lets her go without a fuss when she makes to stand, and Agatha suspects that, deep down, he is relieved that she won’t be making any more demands on his time.

He never bothers seeing her out—usually too busy checking his email, or scrolling social media, or doing God knows what else on his phone, while Agatha begins padding around his bedroom to look for her discarded clothing.

Once, she catches him staring at her as she moves around the room, head still on the pillow and lips parted, some undecipherable expression in his eyes.

“What?” she asks, self-conscious.

“Nothing,” he says, and his expression hardens as he looks elsewhere.

“Hey Ben?”

“Mmm?”

Agatha aims for a tone of nonchalance. She’s been thinking about this for a while, “Are you seeing anyone else right now?”

“Hmmm?” His answer, noncommittal.

“Not that it’s—I mean it’s fine either way. But…” she gathers her courage. _Just say it. Stop wussing out and ask for what you want._ “I’m not. Not seeing anybody—not right now, and maybe we could get tested. You know, lose the condom. If you want.”

He looks up at her with wide eyes, but doesn’t reply. Doesn’t even move.

She continues with rushed words, “I mean only if this thing is just between you and me. I mean I’m on birth control and we could always go back to condoms if one of us starts seeing someone else. It doesn’t have to mean—you know—it’s not a big deal. Either way. It’s just for—uh—spontaneity…or whatever.”

This is excruciating. It’s obvious that he doesn’t much like having Agatha around if they are not having sex, so she usually tries to make the process of getting out as quick as possible. They don’t really talk.

But some primal part of her she doesn’t fully approve of has been dying to ask this. To feel him come inside her. And, knowing men, he probably wouldn’t object to it either…unless he’s seeing someone else. Or doesn’t want to limit himself to only be fucking Agatha. Given his busy schedule, and how often they meet for sex, she suspects that’s the case right now anyway. But with Ben, who knows? Maybe he’s got sexual partners all over the place. She consoles herself with a sigh through the nose. She’s not demanding anything of him. It’s just a matter of honesty between adults. It’s awkward, but not too much to ask, is it? Just fuck-buddy rule-making. Totally reasonable.

He’s still staring at her, his hands ball into fists as he finally replies, “Sure. That sounds…good. I’ll make an appointment and send you the results.”

“Okay. I’ll make an appointment too. Have a good night.”

She turns to hide her grin, sneaking a couple of pets to Ben’s cat before letting herself out. She tells herself not to dwell too much on it, but her heart is pounding with private pleasure.


	5. Chapter 5

The whole…thing, it’s not something they can hide. From anyone.

Ben never scents her on purpose, at least not as far as Agatha can tell, but it’s only a matter of time before she begins smelling like him, and only a little longer before there is an undercurrent to his own smell that speaks loudly of frequent interactions with an Omega. A specific Omega. How Ben deals with it, Agatha has no idea. It is entirely possible that he just doesn’t care, since Agatha highly doubts that he thinks of her when she’s not naked in his immediate presence. And as for Agatha… denying what’s going on between them would be pointless, so she doesn’t bother trying.

She wishes she could though when Skywalker confronts her after rounds one morning.

“It’s getting stronger.”

“Stronger, what?” she mutters, knowing exactly what. Knowing that no amount of time in the shower can erase the fact that she probably smells like Ben on the inside, at the moment. She tries not to look sheepish, but fails when she looks into Skywalker’s curmudgeonly sharp gaze.

Agatha shoulders slump, and she gives up on pretense. “It’s just—It’s not what you think.”

“Agatha. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I know how to keep my distance.” Agatha lowers her voice, “We have well established…boundaries.”

“Ordinarily, I’d have no interest in your personal life, but….”

“But?”

“Ben is…dangerous.” Luke’s softens his expression, looking younger than she’s ever seen him. “—for you, I mean. You’re much too smart to be playing with fire.”

“I’m not a first year intern in my twenties. I’ve been around the bend.” Agatha feels her cheeks heat, completely undermining the pragmatic maturity she’s trying to project.

“You’re also one of the most empathetic doctors I’ve ever worked with.” He reaches out to pat her hand. “I want to tell you that that’s a good thing, but it worries me, especially when it comes to my nephew. He’s not a compassionate man. A talented physician, yes, very. But he’s not good with people. I don’t think he’s really capable of…connection.”

“You really don’t need to worry. I’ve no illusions. I knew what I was getting into from the start.” Agatha hopes she sounds more confident than she feels.

Luke sighs and turns back to the charts on his desk. “I sure hope so.”

* * *

He doesn’t come to the door when she rings the doorbell, which is unusual. A first, actually. After a minute spent trying to remember whether she was supposed to come over or she just dreamt about making plans to meet, Agatha takes her phone to call Ben. A text delivers as soon as she unlocks the screen.

Ben <Door should be unlocked>

Ben <Living room>

By now Agatha is familiar enough with the layout of the house, but she still frowns as she steps inside. Ben usually opens the door when she arrives, and about half of the times he greets her and offers her a drink before putting his hands on her.

The other half, he doesn’t bother.

She comes to an abrupt stop on the threshold of the living room as soon as she spots him, sitting on the couch, trapped underneath approximately ten pounds of cat.

He looks a bit annoyed by the situation, but also pleased with having been chosen as the ideal location for a late afternoon nap.

Agatha opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it once more.

“Um. Should I come back another day?”

Ben looks up at the sound of her voice.

“Ah, no—No,” he hesitates, looking back into his lap. “I’ll move her. I just…”

Agatha understands why Ben doesn’t want to stand. She’s familiar with the uncomplicated pleasure of receiving affection from a pet. What’s absolutely mind-boggling is to think that Doctor Ben Solo, unfeeling dick extraordinaire, would be, too.

So she tells him, “Don’t. I’m not in a hurry.”

Which leaves them, at least temporarily, in a bit of an odd situation: Agatha in this house with Ben, without being busy doing the one thing they do best in each other’s company. It means conversation, probably. Which—it’s just not something they’ve ever done before.

“So...” Agatha looks around and clears her throat. “Is the cat the Alpha of the house?”

Ben glares at her. With that resentful expression, and a cat in his lap, he looks like the parody of some old-style supervillain, and suddenly—Agatha can’t help laughing.

“Just saying. You’re looking pretty submissive, over there.”

“Shut up.”

Feeling more at ease, Agatha walks into the room. She is wearing a dress because— _because_. She could probably come over in scrubs, or in her ratty leggings with a hole on the left knee, and he likely wouldn’t care nor notice. She’s not sure why she sometimes makes the effort of looking nice before driving here. Putting on eyeliner, and all that. Probably another one of those Omega things that Agatha’s only now discovering about herself.

Lucky her.

Ben is sitting right next to the couch’s armrest, and there is an open book face down on his left. Agatha opts for lowering herself on the floor in front of him, kneeling so that she is facing the cat. She lifts her hand, scratching lightly behind soft ears.

“What’s your name, sweet one?” Agatha has been meaning to ask Ben for a while. It just didn’t seem to fit within the parameters of… whatever this is.

“Ryan.”

She looks up at him, surprised. “Ryan?”

Ben sighs. ”I gather you are aware that calicos are always females?”

Agatha smiles, “I gather you didn’t?”

Ben sighs and Ryan’s purring intensifies under Agatha’s fingers. She scratches a little harder, and is rewarded when the cat pushes her little head into Agatha’s hand. 

“Why Ryan, though?”

“I don’t know.” Ben shrugs, sounding just a touch self-conscious. “I didn’t mean to adopt her. She started hanging around more and more, and then the neighbor’s kid asked me what her name was, and a resident named Ryan had paged me a minute earlier.” Ben thinks about it for a while. “It wasn’t my best moment.”

Agatha leans forward, Ben’s smell immediately hits her, but not—not like it usually does when they find themselves alone and they’re about to have sex. It’s more of an enveloping, calming blanket.

“Hi, Ryan,” she whispers. The cat blinks lazily and leans a bit into Agatha’s face.

The silence stretches, not quite uncomfortable but not easy, either, and after a while Agatha motions to the book next to Ben with her chin.

“What’s that? The handbook of how to make second year residents cry in the bathroom stall after rounds?”

Ben rolls his eyes. “I just said the truth.”

“Mmm. I hear it’s a bestseller.”

Ben gives her a flat look. “He should toughen up,” he says, but he also lifts the book to show Agatha the cover.

“No way—you’re reading _Ender’s Game_?”

“Rereading.”

Agatha perks up. “You a sci-fi fan?”

“A bit,” he says, non-committal.

On a hunch, Agatha looks around the sunny room, her eyes coming to rest on the tall bookshelf next to the TV. It’s close enough that she can make out the titles of most volumes— _Speaker for the Dead, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Sirens of Titan, Stranger in a Strange Land, Solaris…_

Wow.

“A bit, huh?”

“Yes. A bit.”

Feeling almost giddy, Agatha continues petting Ryan. “What’s your favorite?”

“Impossible to choose just one.” Then there is a short pause in which he presses his lips together in that uniquely Ben Solo way of his, and after that: “What about you? Have you read any of—?”

“I couldn’t put _Ender’s Game_ down the first time I read it, ditched all my classes the next day to finish it. I didn’t care for the second one though I’ve only read it once. I’ve been meaning to give it a second go. But I’m a sucker for Harding’s _Triad of Being_ series. I keep rereading those instead.” Agatha notices how Ben is staring at her, and realizes that she’s outed herself as a hopelessly niche sci-fi nerd. _Oh well_. “I also find anything by Vonnegut completely irresistible. That man has the sexiest sense of humor…”

He almost smiles, “Fangirls.”

All those past weeks Agatha spent wondering if the man even had an interior life, and he was a sci-fi fan all along. This is almost paradigm-shifting.

Ben looks around the room for a few moments, searching for who knows what. Then his eyes return to study Ryan, who’s starting to move her tail around and stretch a little in his lap. Ben’s cheeks look a little red. It must be because of the heat; they’ve basically had no spring this year—went from inches upon inches of snow to terribly hot and terribly humid, all in a couple of weeks. Not that Agatha’s complaining.

“They’re showing the movie,” he says eventually. “Director’s cut. At a small nearby theater. In two weeks.”

“Oh—At the Englert? Yeah, I know! I actually promised Jodi a bunch of favors to get her to cover my on-call shift so I can go.“

He lifts his eyes to hers. Is he flushing? No, he can’t be. “You’re going?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.”

“Believe me, it was a feat to find someone who’d go with me—the theatrical release got a bad rap, but I still want to see it. In the end Poe and his mate—you know Finn, right?—they said they’d go if I buy them drinks beforehand. And afterwards. Anyway, this other friend of theirs is going, too. A guy I haven’t met yet. Supposedly wrote a paper about Orson Scott Card back in grad school.”

“Oh,” Ben repeats, seeming vaguely… who knows. Maybe just annoyed? Likely at her blathering, Agatha would guess—this is not what he signed up for when he texted her earlier today. Ryan seems to pick up on it, too, because she stretches gracefully for a long moment and then hops to the floor after throwing Ben a slightly disgruntled look, tail waving in the air. They both turn to follow her progress until she’s out of the room—likely headed for the kitchen after her hard afternoon labors.

And then. Then they are alone.

“Hey,” Agatha tells Ben, still kneeling on the floor. Looking up at him.

His scent is spiking a bit. Like this, from this angle, he seems even bigger than usual. Even more handsome, the lines of his face more slanted and exotic. Apparently, it’s possible.

“Hey.” His voice is soft, and rich, and— _God._ Suddenly, Agatha cannot figure out how it is possible that they still have their clothes on. That her hands are not on him, that he’s not inside her.

_Yet._

Agatha lays her palm on Ben’s knee, feeling warm, solid muscle through his jeans. She looks up at him to ask for—something, permission probably—and he doesn’t respond, expression as inscrutable as it so often is of late. He’s holding her gaze, though, which can’t mean no, right? Emboldened, Agatha moves her hand up his thigh and even higher, until it reaches the seam of his pants. She unbuttons his fly, and he doesn’t waste time asking her what she’s doing, or why. His cock—she noticed it was already semi-hard when she started this, could even smell his arousal, but it’s getting even longer now, and longer still as the back of her fingers brush on it through the heavy material.

“May I?” she asks, before taking him out through the opening of his boxer-briefs. The Alpha at the end of the sentence is mute but implied, and he hears it as clearly as if she had screamed it. His nod has her fingers move quickly to free him, and then—then she’s not looking up at him anymore, but it doesn’t matter, because his hands are on her throat, fingers twined in her hair and thumbs running over her glands as she takes him as deep as possible until she can feel it, pulsating deep inside her.

_His approval._

His taste—they’ve never done this, though he always, always insists on going down on her before they have sex. And now Agatha knows why. She knew before, really, having read enough medical texts on pheromones and bodily fluids and everything related, but now she _knows_. Now, she can’t get enough, and her throat catches on the head of his cock so many times that he has to wrap his fingers around her hair in an attempt to soothe her. He stares at her throughout, lips slightly parted, a mix of wonder and uncertainty in his face. Every time he grunts— _yes, yes, perfect_ —a fresh pulse of wetness pools inside her cunt. She is so taken by what she is doing, the ache between her legs becoming more intense, her panties soaked and irritating her skin every time she shifts, that it takes her long moments to realize that—

Agatha leans back. “Your, um—knot—”

“What about—Oh." Ben’s Adam’s apple bobs, and he wets his lips. "Yeah, it does that. Just ignore it.”

“What should I—”

“Nothing,” Ben says, impatient. He tugs at her shoulder. “Just—come up here. I want to fuck you.”

 _No,_ Agatha thinks. _Not yet._

She leans forward, spurred by something she probably couldn’t say—it’s red, his knot is red and hot and huge, and it carries so much of his scent—and she parts her lips to lick it, just the tip of her tongue against his skin.

Ben’s hands tighten on her hair almost painfully, and Agatha’s eyes move up to meet his. He looks shocked. Dazed and shocked.

“Was that… painful?”

“No. Just—you might want to... avoid it.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s— _Shit_.”

Agatha licks at it again, this time a broad, purposeful stroke, suddenly feeling—powerful. Relishing the control she has over Ben, for once. _Alpha. Alpha, am I doing well?_ Something inside her wants to ask. Agatha pushes it down and focuses on Ben’s knot again, speaking against it, tickling it with her breath. Ben’s hands are shaking minutely.

“What’s going to happen, if I continue?”

“You know what’s going to—ah.”

Agatha parts her lips and suckles on Ben’s knot, and he—he just loses it. Completely. Not in a loud, vocal way, like he sometimes does. There is a shift in his scent, sudden and overwhelming, his head thrown back and some deep, Alpha sound coming out of his chest, and then—then he is coming silently, his seed trickling down the head and the shaft as Agatha struggles to keep up with it. His thighs flex as his hand tightens on Agatha’s nape, holding her there, close enough that she can’t escape.

 _I’m here, Alpha_. Mouth still stretched around him, Agatha looks up at Ben as he meets her gaze, slowly coming down from his orgasm. _I’m here._ He exhales shakily and gentles his touch, thumb trailing to Agatha’s cheekbone as she finishes swallowing and licks him clean. It feels as if his pheromones are already running in her bloodstream, making her want to squirm even as she is now, sitting back on her heels.

Ben—he notices.

“God. You’re beyond belief,” he tells her, and Agatha doesn’t quite know what he means by that. “Come here.”

“I—” Suddenly, Agatha feels embarrassed about what just occurred. About what she just did. About how wet she is.

“Come on.”

”Maybe—“

“Please. I can smell you. Let me fuck you.”

He has her dress off before she is aware of having said yes. Agatha sinks on him like butter melting, reveling in the way he groans, groaning herself. This is—not a position they’ve tried yet, and even with all her natural lubrication he feels larger than before. A little too large for comfort, stretching her just on this side of pain, his knot pressing against her folds whenever she bears down. It’s simply too swollen to slip inside her, but Agatha closes her eyes and pretends that it’s possible—that he could thrust up and lock her to himself, and then spend long minutes just—there. Coming inside her.

It makes Agatha lose her mind a little, and she thinks Ben likes it, too, because his hands slide from her breasts to her waist to her ass, to hold her as flush to himself as possible, and his breath becomes louder and quicker against her ear.

 _He wants you_ , a voice inside Agatha whispers. _He’s your Alpha, and he wants you, and he is pleased to be fucking you, and—_

When she comes it’s not gradual—no warning tremors or tingles creeping up her spine, no blooming warmth in her abdomen. The blinding pleasure rushes through Agatha unexpected, shapeless, with no beginning and no end, so intense that Agatha feels undone, unbound and adrift. Without thinking, without meaning to, she parts her lips and bites Ben on the curve of his neck, trying to hold on to him.

Even with her brain as sluggish as it is, it takes her less than five seconds to realize what she just did. An Omega’s bite has no real biological consequence, but it’s still a bite, with plenty of meaning attached to it, and—Ben can’t be happy about this.

Agatha immediately makes to pull back when his large hand settles on the back of her head and holds her in place.

“Stay—” he pushes out, and then he’s coming, too, flooding her to overflowing, and for several moments they are so close that she cannot say where he ends and she begins.

_Dangerous, all of this. Magnificent._

They come down from the high slowly, Agatha pressing wet kisses into the spot she bit for one last time, relieved to notice that she didn’t break the skin. When she manages to lift her gaze up to Ben’s, his expression is fuzzy and dazed.

Agatha almost feels the need to reassure him—though of what, she doesn't know.

“I—”

He doesn’t let her finish, covering her lips in a slow, deep, thorough kiss that makes everything in Agatha’s body reach a state of peace. It’s heavier, more involved, more contact than there usually is between the two of them after sex. But then again, today was—odd, for sure. Unusual.

_Beautiful._

“I don’t know what it is, with you,” Ben says against her mouth. The words are addressed to Agatha but not really directed at her, a musing that seems to escape Ben’s usual tight guards—perhaps temporarily out of order because of the sheer intensity of what just happened.

“Why does it have to be me?” She sighs, and then kisses him again on the mouth, delicate and sweet. “Maybe it’s you who’s… hypersensitive.”

“I'm really not.” He doesn't seem defensive—just his usual, painful honestly. Even without being able to see his face, Agatha can feel his lips curl up into a small smile. “I can’t believe you’re on the maximum dose of suppressants.”

Agatha stiffens.

“Well. I am.” It’s not as if she would lie about this. “Poe says he can barely smell me. So it must be you.”

“Poe’s an idiot. A decent doctor, but an absolute idiot,” Ben says moodily. And then adds, “It’s going to be a problem, when you stop them.”

Agatha stiffens even more. “Well, good thing that I’m not going to stop them, then.”

“Oh. Have you—recently?”

“No.”

Arms still wrapped around Agatha’s waist, Ben leans back against the couch to better see her face. He looks puzzled.

“When do you usually go off suppressants?”

“I don’t.”

“When have you last—”

“Years ago.”

A heartbeat. “You should.”

“No way.”

“Agatha—you have to stop your suppressants. At least for a cycle.”

“I—What are you talking about?” She pushes against Ben’s shoulders and tries to pull away from him, but he keeps his grip tight around her, and he’s so much stronger than her that he doesn’t even budge. Not to mention that he is—of course—still hard, and still inside her. It makes for some impossible maneuvering.

“Agatha. You know the science. You must have read the literature.”

“I don’t care about the literature.”

“You’re a physician. It’s evidence-based medicine. Power up PubMed and do a quick search.”

“For what?” Agatha asks, sullen. “For the nagging voice inside my head; am I going crazy or is it just proximity to Ben Solo?’”

He is not amused. “For best heat practices for Omegas. If you don’t allow your body to go through heats regularly, you run the risk of—“

“There is no such thing as best practice—every Omega is different, with different needs and—”

“But there is. You should have one heat per year, at the very minimum—”

“And you should stop telling Omegas what to do with their lives.”

Ben quiets down, staring at Agatha testily. When he speaks again, Agatha’s still well on her way to getting really, really angry.

“I’m not trying to be a dick. I’m just saying that there are meta-analyses that show with incontrovertible proof that—”

“—that Alphas and Betas really enjoy telling Omegas what to do with their bodies.”

Curious, how part of Agatha knows that she’s being unreasonable—that she’d probably be baffled if she were in charge of a patient in her situation, stubbornly refusing to do what’s best for her regardless of potential health risks. Still, this…it's not something she enjoys dwelling on, and having Ben Solo—or any other Alpha—tell her that she should make herself go through a heat, and be vulnerable for days on end without family or social support, without anyone to take care of her…. Well. That’s a bit much.

Ben seems to realize it, because he stares a hole through her for a long moment and then—he just shrugs, seemingly uncaring. “Suit yourself.”

“Thank you. I will.”

And then—then Ben does something that surprises her. He leans forward, and then even closer, one hand traveling up her spine and coming to rest right on top of her mating gland, its weight warm and solid.

“But if you decided to have one, I’d help you.”

Agatha’s breath hitches from the pleasure of it—the words, his eyes, his hand. She can’t quite wrap her head around the nonchalance with which he can do something so… filthy. “I’d fuck you right through it.” He presses a kiss on her throat—not quite on her neck gland but less than an inch away, and his voice becomes even deeper. “I’d take care of you.”

He is so close. He smells so incredible. He fucks her so well, and when he moves to lick her neck gland Agatha is almost tempted to say yes, _yes, I’ll have a heat if that will please you, Alpha. Yes._

But that’s something… _intimate_ —a little too intimate for two people who barely talk when they’re not at work, who meet a few times a week just to have some very excellent but ultimately meaningless sex.

What they are has a name. Fuckbuddies, and with more emphasis on the fuck than the buddies. Not that Ben has problems remembering that. It’s Agatha, who’s not very good at it.

With effort, Agatha manages to lift herself away from him. She swallows a whimper at the loss of him from inside her, at the combination between the sudden sense of emptiness and the pleasurable friction on her sensitive walls. She has to clear her throat before speaking.

“No need. But thank you, stud.”

On her upper back, her mating gland is throbbing, waiting to be acknowledged again, begging Ben for any type of attention. Agatha ignores it, conscious of the remnants of what they just did as they spill down her thigh, and begins looking around for her underwear. She has a vague memory of Ben throwing something to his right, but—

His long fingers close around her wrist. His other hand travels up her leg, uncaring—no, seeking the messy mix of fluids that is coating it. The mess that he just made inside her. His palm rests on her inner thigh, quietly possessive.

“Say it. Say you’ll come to me if you decide to have one.” Ben’s voice is low, but the calm intensity in his eyes makes Agatha shiver.

“I’m not going to—”

“Say. It.”

There is that something, behind the words. That something that tells Agatha that this is very important for her Alpha—no, no, _an_ Alpha, not _her_ Alpha—and that she should not refuse him. Agatha could probably fight the impulse, but she finds that—she doesn’t really want to.

“I will, Alpha.”

Ben nods, satisfied, and lets her go.

* * *

“Ah. It’s you, then.”

Dr. Snoke gives Agatha the creeps, with his yellowish skin and those sunken cheeks and that slow, malignant laugh he sometimes lets loose when one of his residents gives the wrong answer after being quizzed during rounds. He is, in Agatha’s modest but unwavering opinion, the prime example of the worst possible reason to decide to become a physician: very little interest in helping people out—and a whole lot in cutting them open and making a lot of money in the process.

Still, as head of the surgical unit, the fact that Agatha was always repelled by him doesn’t much matter, because he’s close to retirement, and as an internist she is fairly unlikely to register on his radar. Except that, as it turns out, having some very excellent sex with Snoke’s protege is the number one way to get noticed.

“Pardon me?”

“It’s you, then,” he repeats.

Agatha nearly drops the cup of instant ramen she’s been filling with hot water. It’s after ten on a slow day, and Agatha hasn’t seen anyone on this floor in the past twenty minutes. She wasn’t expecting for someone to enter the doctors’ lounge—least of all Snoke, who doesn’t strike her as the type to… lounge.

“Um… me? Doctor Snoke, I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Agatha M—”

“That Ben has been stinking of.”

The ramen cup falls to the floor with a deaf sound, its contents splattering around Agatha’s feet.

“What—”

“I’ve been wondering.” The way he’s staring at her…Agatha is dressed in pants, a long-sleeved blouse, and labcoat, and still she feels an impulse to cover herself. “I thought you might be a great beauty, or something of the like.”

 _Yeah, well, surprise! Asshole._ She doesn’t bother to respond aloud, resolving to waste not one more minute with this tactless bastard. Instead she grabs at the nearby paper towels on the counter, then kneels to attend to the mess of half cooked Ramen steaming at her feet.

“I wonder, what he sees in you.” As he steps towards her, Agatha resists looking up at him. He’s already tall and less frail than he deserves to be, given his advanced age. He moves closer, and Agatha feels revulsed, and crowded and… nervous, a little. So, hands filled with soiled paper towels, she squares her shoulders, and rises to look him in the eye.

Unflinchingly, he inhales deeply.

“Ah—yes. I do see what it is about you, now.”

She turns to toss the contents of her hands into the trash bin, freeing both hands to smack him hard across the face, if necessary. She hasn’t had to square off against an Alpha _creep_ like this in years.

“Dr. Snoke, this is highly inappropriate.”

“A willing Omega.” Snoke’s upper lip curls up. “How clichéd. So Ben Solo is just an Alpha with a bitch, after all. I think I expected better of him.”

He steps back, easily dodging the slap he must have known was coming, a nasty smirk on his wrinkled face. _Why this man thinks that he has the right to talk to me this way, I have no idea._ Standing stupidly, with Ramen-sticky hand still raised, Agatha simply declares, “I am done with his conversation.”

He ignores her so thoroughly, it’s as if Agatha never even opened her mouth. The condescension in his tone makes her skin crawl. “You must know that you have nothing of value to offer to someone like him.”

Her rage deepens impossibly as she clenches her fist. “Apparently I do have something he wants.”

He chuckles sinisterly, eyes gleaming, “Oh yes. Yes, you do. But I said, _of value._ ”

Briefly, Agatha squeezes her eyes shut. She hates this. All of it. The smell of that immeasurable bastard still standing near her. That she put herself in this situation to begin with, because—because, because of sex. That someone as disgusting as Snoke might feel entitled to treat her this way.

It might be worth putting up with if she thought Ben cared. But whether he does or not is immaterial, because the fact of the matter is that _she_ has started to care. When she promised herself, over and over and over, that she never would.

Agatha resists the urge to punch Snoke. Assaulting him would only fuel his malicious pleasure in provoking her, and probably get her fired. She hates this, hates herself.

She takes a step back. Enraged. Defeated.

“Excellent.” The affectation in his tone is gone, now. One could cut diamonds, with his words. “It would be a pity, for a young thing like you to get her pretty little heart broken.”


	6. Chapter 6

Ben <Tonight?>

_Yes._

Except.

Except that after whatever that was with Snoke, and with her daughter returning soon, Agatha knows she needs to cool it with Solo.

Which probably means— _no._

Another no, after a couple of polite, firm, painful no’s last week, and after he had been gone the week before to give a bunch of overpaid guest talks somewhere, gifting Agatha with seven horrible, blessed, mercifully Ben-free days... and after the week before that, in which Agatha was out sick, stuck in bed with the worst case of the flu since childhood, stupid from the drugs and barely able to lift herself out of bed.

Ben was surprisingly sweet about it, getting her address from Poe and showing up at her doorstep to bring her soup, sitting across from her at the small kitchen table and staring fixedly at her until she’d eaten most of it.

A bit annoying, too.

He doesn’t quite annoy Agatha as much as he used to—well, he does, with his snarky comments at work and that unbelievable scent and that ever-suffering expression of his, but she is used to it by now. No, the problem was that having Ben in her apartment, even that short visit, meant that the smell of him lingered for days and completely short-circuited Agatha’s brain, making her think laughable things—like that he cared for her, while in truth he was surely only acting out of some instinctual Alpha sense of duty, or worse, possession.

Ben <Tomorrow works too>

Ben <after 9 PM>

She should just tell him no.

_No, and we shouldn’t see each other again outside of work. Because this whole thing—it was supposed to be just sex, but I’m not sure my brain knows that anymore. And although you are a dick, maybe you’re not as horrible as I thought, and I really can’t run the risk of falling for someone like you. Maybe I am nothing but the proverbial stupid, proximity-seeking Omega, but that doesn't mean that I have to act like one._

She really should just tell him no, no more, and be done with all of this.

Agatha <Sorry—busy. Raincheck, okay?>

She has to close her eyes when she presses send.

* * *

The first sign is that—she feels hot.

Which wouldn’t count as a real sign, except that Agatha is usually cold in the hospital’s air-conditioning. But today, she loathes having to put on her lab coat.

The second sign comes during a consultation, when the patient—mid fifties, Alpha, probable acute respiratory infection—grabs her ass.

He just—grabs her ass—aggressively, in front of his wife, in front of his kids, and he really didn’t strike Agatha as the type who would. Thankfully Rose is there to help her extricate herself from the offending grasp with as little conflict as possible.

The third sign—which, Agatha really should have picked up on—is that she hasn’t eaten anything in twenty-four hours. She notices when she finds three granola bars and yesterday’s sandwich still in her locker, which is starting to smell a little like her fridge did during the first couple of years of her residency, and—she doesn’t remember having dinner last night, or breakfast this morning. Okay, this really should have tipped her off because it’s just not like her to forget about food. It does make her stop and think for moment, had she forgotten her suppressants?

_No, no, she never forgets them. It’s coincidence._

The fourth—is not even a sign. It’s just Poe’s horrified expression as he stares at Agatha.

“Are you—? Agatha.”

“What?”

“You’re going into heat.”

She rolls her eyes and looks away from him, tapping at her phone to search for that email she sent herself with a list of things she absolutely needed to get done by two days ago. She’s sure she missed at least five.

“You have way too much spare time, my friend.”

“No—I’m serious.”

Thing is—Poe does sound serious, for once, which is what gets her attention.

“I can’t. I’m on suppressants.”

Poe looks like he doesn’t believe her.

“Did you forget a dose, earlier this month?”

“No.”

“Well, you must have.”

There’s a cold feeling creeping up her spine now. Odd, since the palm of the hand currently clutching her phone is definitely sweating.

“I’m one hundred percent sure I haven’t. You’re probably just—”

“Okay, okay, I don’t even—” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Then he starts again. “Listen, Agatha,—you’re like a sister to me. A little sister. Plus I’m very happily bonded.”

“Poe—what are you talking about?”

He takes a deep breath.

“You’re clearly going into heat. And I am having thoughts about you that I really don’t want to have. Not about you. Which means that you need to go home. Immediately.”

“No. I—It’s not possible.”

“It’s happening.”

“There is no way I—” Suddenly, it dawns on her. And— “Fuck.”

_Fuck._

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—

“You did forget a dose, didn’t you?” Poe does love feeling smug, doesn’t he?

Agatha, on the other hand, wants to scream. Or to kill herself for being so fucking stupid. Or—God, both. At the same time.

“Fuck.”

“Listen, if you just missed a dose this is probably not going to be a real heat—”

“No, no, I—the antivirals.” This is—the worst. The absolute worst. "When I had the flu. They interact with…” Agatha can’t even bring herself to finish the sentence.

This is… _astonishingly horrible._

“Wasn’t there a New England Journal of Medicine paper on antivirals and their effects on hormonal cycles? Hey—don’t they neutralize suppressants for several cycles?”

A muffled, “Shut up” sounds way too mild for the panic she’s experiencing, even to her own ears.

Poe— _fuck Poe_. He’s—he’s basically laughing, now.

“Oh, Agatha. This is—It’ll be okay.”

Agatha doesn’t lift her head. “No, it won’t. I’m going into heat.”

“Yeah, but look at the pros. You get automatic time off work. And heat sex is good sex, no? Do you have someone to call?” he asks, suggestively.

Yes—maybe she does have someone to call. A face comes to mind, and a name, someone who once said that if Agatha were to have a heat—

_No, no, no, no no. No. Absolutely no. Swipe left. Abort mission._

Agatha shakes her head.

“Oh. I mean, I guess I would be happy to—”

“Poe!” Agatha looks up at him, appalled.

“—but Finn would cut my dick off with a rusty knife. Unless he decided to join us, too, but…”

“Poe!”

“Right, right.” He is scratching the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Right. Horrible idea.”

“Wasn’t I like a sister to you, until three minutes ago?”

“Yeah, well.” He grimaces. “Thing is, you don’t smell like anyone’s sister, right now.” His tone is a little pained. “You really need to leave. And call someone to help you.”

“Can’t I… Can’t I do it on my own?”

Yes. Agatha knows that Omegas go through heats on their own. It’s not deadly, or maiming, or anything nearly as dramatic. It’s just that by all accounts it’s…

_Terrible. The absolute worst._

Apparently, Poe has read the same literature, because he’s sympathy-wincing. “You really don’t want to do that.” He lights up. “Hey, can’t you ask Solo to help you? Are you still doing that fuck buddy thing with him?”

_Yes. No. Kind of._

“Not really.”

“Well—still, he won’t say no. Between us, I doubt he gets laid that much, considering the fact that he’d have to socially interact with people to get to that stage, and I just can’t imagine he’d be down for it, given his sunny personality—”

“Poe!”

“What? I’m just being honest. Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, you should ask him.”

_God._

Agatha can almost feel the way Ben’s hand closed on her wrist the last time they were together. _I’d take care of you,_ he’d said. And then—then he’d said other things, too.

“I don’t want to take advantage...” She has no idea how to explain the situation to Poe. How to put it into words for herself. “I don’t know. Sharing a heat—it’s more intimate than what we…signed up for. I don’t want him to think that I’m trying to get him to…” _Really be with me, or something._

Poe leans forward to clasp her shoulders, and then—he realizes his mistake, because he immediately straightens and takes two whole steps back.

“Agatha, believe me. He won’t be thinking anything like that.” He’s retreats even further, startling when he bumps into the wall next to the door. “In fact, he likely won’t be thinking at all.”

* * *

Agatha stares at her phone, pondering over the fact that when she unplugged it from its charger this morning she never, ever would have thought that she’d be back home five hours into the workday—or that she’d use it to make this particular phone call.

_And yet._

“Agatha?”

Wherever Ben is, it sounds like there’s a mix of construction, a cocktail party, and maybe even a TED talk happening around him, and Agatha—sitting in the quiet of her apartment, Agatha is already regretting this.

“Ben. Um, is this a bad moment?”

“Are you okay? What happened?” He sounds a little worried. Or maybe he’s just irritated that she’s calling him at one pm on a workday. Hard to tell, with him.

“I—nothing happened.”

“What—Why are you calling?”

“I… just…I was calling to—um..”

 _God_. Maybe the inability to form sentences is courtesy of this truckload of estrogen that’s swimming inside her body, and not that devastatingly sexy voice of his.

“You’ve never called me before. And you’ve been avoiding me for weeks.”

“I have not,” she lied. _Of course_ she has. For the sake of self preservation and putting stuff in perspective and all that. For all the good it has done her _._

“What happened, Agatha?”

This is…painful.

“Listen, this is going to be awkward—”

“Wait a sec—are the labs in there? Okay, leave it, please…What were you saying?”

Agatha stands from the couch and walks to her window. It’s meant to give her something to do, to help her release the tension, but it only succeeds in reminding her exactly what’s going on … down there.

“So—I’m sorry to bother you on a workday. Just know I’m not expecting…you don’t have to say yes.”

“I probably won’t, then.” There is the noise of a door closing in the background. Someone—a woman’s voice—saying what sounds like “Bye, Ben,” though Agatha can’t make out the words very clearly. Then, nothing.

Agatha takes a deep breath.

“I think... That flu I had a while ago? You probably don’t recall, but I was sick and—”

“Three weeks ago.”

“Oh. You remember.”

“I do have a functioning hippocampus. What about that?”

It’s okay. _It’s okay._

“Well, I had to take some antivirals. And I think they might have had some… contraindications.”

A pause. Wherever Ben is, it must be somewhere private, because the call is much quieter now. Agatha runs a hand on her nape, trying to figure out how to finish explaining what happened without sounding like a complete idiot. The gesture makes the material of her shirt pull and rub against the hard points of her nipples. They feel sore, and so do both the glands on her neck.

The one on her upper back—Agatha is trying not think about it. This—intellectually, she knows that this is going to get worse, but—there is no way this can get more intense. _No way._

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Yes, just—I think they ended up interacting with… with other drugs I was taking.”

Agatha really, really wishes Ben would figure out the point on his own, using that super brain of his that everyone keeps yapping about. To be fair, though, it’s probably a little too much to ask, considering that this is way off his specialty.

“What—are you calling for a medical consultation?”

“No. Ben, I…” She sighs. “I think I might be about to go into heat.”

There is silence on the other side of the line, a very deep, very silent silence, and—this really cannot be a good sign which is why Agatha anxiously tries to fill it, “Actually, I’m sort of sure I am. Positive, really. Anyway. No pressure here, none at all. But I was wondering… I was wondering if maybe you would be…interested in helping me out.”

The last five words come out rushed, with no pauses in between—though it doesn’t really matter, because there is no way Ben hasn’t gotten the gist of what Agatha’s call is about by now, the magnitude of what she’s asking. Yes, he offered to see her through a heat in the past. But at the time they’d just finished having sex, and the air had been full of their combined scents, and only a complete asshole would hold someone accountable for something promised in a moment like that.

An asshole, that’s what Agatha apparently is.

And Ben not only has every right to refuse, but he probably should. It’s just not possible that he doesn’t have anything else planned out for the next three days or so. Which means that Agatha should sit down on her couch again and start making a list of other, more feasible options. Finding another Alpha, or going online and ordering some kind of sex toy and hoping it’ll be delivered in the next ten minutes or so, or maybe—maybe she could meditate this stupid heat away. She’d read somewhere that some Omega Buddhist monks are able to do it. Can’t be that hard, right? If Agatha passed neuroanatomy, she can do anything.

Still, no matter what she chooses, none of this should be Ben’s responsibility, nor even his business. She shouldn’t have called him to begin with.

“Actually—I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

“I’ll be over in an hour.”

The line drops out.

* * *

The first thing Agatha does is assure Ben that her birth-control shot is up to date—not that she has demonstrated much competence when it comes to her reproductive health. At all.

The second thing she does is apologize profusely for interrupting his work schedule, and assure him that Agatha isn’t exactly thrilled about this whole mess. Reiterating that she hadn’t planned this and that she knows how inconvenient this must be.

Ben is not very gracious about it. He listens to Agatha with an irritable expression and then he nods once, curtly.

And then.

Then, he crowds her against her coat rack and orders, “Shut up,” before kissing her, and kissing her, and kissing her some more, his giant hands cupping her face as one leg slips between hers, rib cage pushing against her breasts, pinning her to the wall until she’s just stuck, held there, and it feels as if he’s the only thing between Agatha and the outside world. He’s wearing scrubs with very little underneath (Alphas always run hot, according to Poe) and Agatha changed into thin sweats as soon as she got home and realized the state of her underwear—of her everything, really—and pressed against each other, like this… they are almost, almost close enough. 

His scent is—too much. _Spectacular._ For Agatha, that irresistible scent confirms him to be the most Alpha of all the Alphas whom she has had the dubious pleasure of meeting. It fills her lungs, saturating her senses, reassuring her that yes, this is right, this is good, and that no, there is no way she is ever going to share her heat with anyone else.

Ben pulls back less than an inch, breath hot against her lips.

“You’re so wet—I can feel it. Even like this,” he tells her, voice low and full of wonder and something else, and Agatha—Agatha registers the words and snaps out of it just enough to push against his chest.

Ben’s expression is mildly outraged, but he steps back.

He does this, Agatha has noticed. Respecting her boundaries. He’s the Alpha here—so much larger and stronger than she. Biologically speaking, he could force her into anything. But somehow it’s as if all the power were on Agatha’s side when they are together. Which is— _astonishing_ , all things considered _._

“Listen, I—I think I should shower.”

He half laughs, and makes to grab her waist again, hands slipping under her shirt to close around the dip of her lower back. Every time those familiar sensitive hands press against her skin, it feels more like a claiming. She _should_ find that unsettling, but she relishes it. Especially since it has been so long since he’s laid hands upon her.

_Focus!_

“No, really—I… Ben, I’m a mess.”

He pulls her closer.

“You’re…unbelievable.” He inhales against the skin of her throat. “This is going to be unbelievable.”

Agatha manages to wrestle herself away from him. It’s no small feat, considering that she didn’t really want to—and neither did he, from the way he’s looking at her.

“I really need to wash up.”

“What—no. Don’t shower. Ever again.”

“I—yes. I’m going to. Can you…” _God. God, he smells good. Extraordinary. Ben Solo, the perfect drug._ “Can you… make yourself at home? I have… probably stuff in the fridge?"

"What?"

"And Netflix and HBO, and—”

“Do you even—Agatha, you’re almost in heat. Your body is…” A pause, in which he searches for the right word, “...beautiful.”

It’s somewhere in his expression, in the impatient, frustrated way in which he closes his eyes, that he finds the description inadequate.

Still.

“I’d rather shower.”

He opens his mouth again, and for a moment she thinks he’s going to yell at her like he yells at his residents, his nurses, his patients, the hospital administrators, at… everyone, really. But instead he presses his lips together and says, “Suit yourself.”

She walks past him, avoiding touching him, ignoring the way he vibrates with that energy of his, the way his fists clench as he lets her go. She’s nearly inside the bathroom when it occurs to her that she should say something before she’s too far gone.

“I—I’ve never shared a heat with an Alpha before.” _Yeah. So you’re scared, nothing to be ashamed of._ Her legs tremble as she forces herself to say what she needs to say. “Actually, it’s been a long time—years, since I’ve been in heat at all. I’ve heard the Alpha-Omega combination can be…could you, go easy if you can?”

His jaw shifts slightly, and he worries his lower lip on his teeth, but his eyes remain fixed on hers, “I promise.”

There is something disarming in the way he says the words. In the way he’s staring at her from the end of the hallway, the clear brown of his eyes piercing, painfully honest. _I’ll take care of you._

“I’m sorry, I know this is unfair—"

“It’s fine, Agatha. We’ll figure it out. God knows that I—” He stops himself, leaving her to wonder what exactly it is that God knows. Suddenly, Ben looks… tired? Resigned? Agatha’s not sure anymore. “Just take your shower.”

Agatha closes the bathroom door and then slumps against it, wondering for the millionth time how, why, wherefore she screwed this up so monumentally. This was how she had wrecked her marriage, not that there’s anything to wreck with Ben. Despite the intensity of her guilt and humiliation, she steadies herself with a deep breath. This isn’t the end of the world. So she disrupted both of their lives with this biological blunder, at least--at least it happened while Opal was still out of town… at least _he’s here_. She’s not alone with this and she’s grateful, despite the shame.

Resolved to face the situation, she turns on the shower. No matter what temperature she sets, the water stings her skin—the glands on her wrists and the sides of her neck are sore, her nipples two hard points, breasts achy and over-full. The patch of skin on her upper back is on fire, and it seems to throb and pulse in time with the hollow feeling pooling in her lower belly, and— _God_. Agatha wishes she could just chop it off. _Hey, there is a surgeon in the living room…How handy_.

While she’s drying herself, having just stepped out of the shower, she feels her womb contract, and a new pulse of wetness slowly trickles down her leg. She sets her jaw and dries the mess with a clean towel, fully aware that of all her battles, this is the most lost.

When she pads into the living room wearing plaid pajama pants and her Middle-earth t-shirt, Ben has turned on the TV and is watching an episode of Westworld. He mutes the show as soon as she walks in, inhaling deeply in her direction.

It’s weird, this heat business. Unexpected. She imagined it would be completely out of control, but right now, in this very moment—it’s not that she’s not horny. Because she absolutely is. It’s not that she wouldn’t let Ben do… anything he wants to, really. It’s just that at this point, after this shitty day that isn’t even halfway over yet—

“I think I’m mostly tired.”

Ben nods, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallows.

“It’s normal, no? Pre-heat hormonal fluctuations.” He hesitates, “Come here.”

Unable and unwilling to refuse, Agatha closes the space between them, and he pulls her onto his lap, her legs across his own, and—he’s so huge, his whole body. She can feel how hot, how hard he is under her relatively soft and round frame. And yet, there’s something different in his bearing—not the usual guarded, intense energy she’s used to receive from him, but something soothing and calming.

Exactly what Agatha needs.

She fits her head under his chin, and it takes her long moments to realize that his chest is vibrating minutely, something between a low, deep hum and a purr that immediately sets Agatha’s bones to liquify. _This is right,_ it tells her. _This is where you are supposed to be._

And Ben—Ben is supposed to be here, too. With her. Taking care of her. Taking care of his Omega.

“The antivirals—it’s a long-term thing.” His voice feels even lower than usual in her ear.

“Mmm?”

“The interaction with suppressants.”

“Ah—yeah. Maybe. I don’t remember how many doses I took, but… I might have one more heat after this one, regardless.”

Ben nods, and his chin brushes the top of her hair. Agatha can’t resist—she angles her head until she can reach his left neck gland and licks it once. A small, focused pass of her tongue inspires the purring to intensify.

“I’ll be there.” He brushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

Agatha closes her eyes, feeling an oddly powerful pressure behind her eyelids. Surely she’s not about to cry, though maybe all these hormones are messing with her. Ben—he’s not a nice man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but now, now her heart is breaking with tenderness. She whimpers like a child and nuzzles deeper under his chin, hiding her humiliation.

“Shh. Rest, Agatha.”

She falls asleep in a heartbeat.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Aside from minor tweaks for character, this entire magical chapter belongs to the original author, Ever-so-reylo**

When Agatha awakens, she is lying in her own bed in a pool of her own sweat.

It’s not hot like a high fever, more like a burning deep in her very marrow, scalding her from the inside out. It reminds her of the complaints she’s heard of chemotherapy. There’s also a deep, thrumming hollowness, she’s as empty inside as she’s ever been.

Every sense is overwhelmed with _sublime_ torture. It’s maddening. It _hurts._ She needs to get up. Bathroom. Painkillers. Cool bath—her whole body revolts—no, no, no.

Now she’s managed to lift herself up from the bed and even to put the sole of one foot to the floor, which means that with some effort she should be able to do the same thing for the other foot and then even—

“Where are you going?”

The voice is scratchy with sleep and deep and perfect and it almost smells, it smells like Ben— _Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben_ —and the clenching that’s been going on inside Agatha, which was already unpleasant, becomes about a million times more unbearable. She needs to get to those pills, stat, or she’ll pass out and she won’t—

A hot, heavy arm— _AlphaAlphaAlpha_ —loops around her waist from behind and pulls her mercilessly back.

“Agatha—what are you doing?” The sheets rustle in the semi-darkness. “If you need something, I—”

He falls silent. For about five seconds. And then he speaks.

“Oh, fuck.” He’s breathing heavily, “You are—You smell… ready. Really… ready.”

She can’t process, can’t produce… _words._

“I can’t—let me go—”

“No.” He pulls Agatha backwards, until the heat of his chest scorches the skin of her back through thin cotton. It’s—harrowing.

_Sublime._

“Please—”

“Shh.”

“I need—”

“Shh—Agatha, no.”

Somehow she is on her back, hands pinned to each side of her head.

She arches up. Moans. “I don’t feel well—”

“Okay. It’s okay.”

“I—I need…” Agatha has no idea. Her mind is scorched blank.

“You need to be fucked.” Ben’s tone is not lecherous—just the facts, evenly stated, and it scares the hell out of her. Her body is pulsating, throbbing, as tense as a violin string, a mess of slick running down her thighs. And this—this just might be how she dies.

“Please.” She is whining, now, squirming under him, with his cock, his huge, perfect cock leaking on her stomach through his clothes.

_God._

“I’ve got you.” Ben stares at her as she wriggles underneath him, pupils as large as they can dilate, but he is…calm. No, that’s not the right word. His eyes are glassy and his hands are clutching her too tight. She can see the depth of every breath he takes in the way the line of his shoulders rises and falls, but—here, Ben is in his element.

Agatha can’t be still; she’s needy and hot and confused, and he’s the very opposite—steadying her twisting hips, grounding her with a nip to her throat, just forceful enough to make her moan and bite back the words, _Please. Alpha, please._

Ben—he has taken control of this.

Of her.

“Easy.” _His voice_. He pulls her pajamas off seamlessly.

“I don’t—Please, make it stop.”

“Shh. It’s okay. I’m going to—God, you feel amazing.”

Agatha groans, and shimmies her hips. The moment she manages to open her eyes again, Ben is holding her thighs apart with his knees, and Agatha should feel embarrassed, but she has to—she wants to show her Alpha. She wants to see him look at her, and God, the way he’s staring at the mess that she has become—it’s as if he’s spellbound, lips parted, breath coming faster. His underwear is pushed low on his legs and his hand is gripping the base of his cock. It’s clear that he was on his way to something else—maybe to fucking her. He said he would fuck her. Was he serious when he said he’d fuck her? Had she imagined it? Because please, please, please, she will do anything, anything at all—but he got sidetracked by something.

By…

“Agatha. You— _sweetheart_.” His voice is hoarse. He hesitates for a moment, and then his fingers leave his cock to trail up Agatha’s legs. Trace the crease between her thigh and her abdomen. They both exhale as he parts her folds. He touches the rim of her swollen vagina with his fingers as his thumb strokes her clit. Looking dumbstruck, he tells her “This is so—much. You really, really need this, don’t you.”

It’s not a question.

The small part of Agatha’s brain that is still functioning wonders if this slick fetish he seems to have is common to all Alphas or something uniquely Ben’s. From the way he’s looking at her cunt like he’s found the holy grail, Agatha would guess a bit of both. And then—she doesn’t want to guess anymore, because he’s bending down and licking her, tongue flat and wide as if he’s trying to drink her up, and it’s not that it doesn’t feel good—it’s maddening, it’s incredible—but it’s not what Agatha needs.

“This hurts—stop, stop, stop, please—”

He must understand, because immediately he’s on her, smelling like heaven, chest crushing her breasts and pushing in. And in. And in. And in. And that’s the hilt, but he still slides further, and Agatha goes from painfully empty to painfully full.

“This is _good_ ,” he tells her, stupefied, and it’s clear from his tone that he finds the words inadequate.

There is no room left inside Agatha. For anything.

“I know.”

He works the arm he is not leaning against underneath Agatha’s rib cage to pull her tighter, flush to himself, and Agatha wonders if she has ever been this close to anyone before. If he has.

She can’t do much except hold onto him as he begins to move, feeling the slippery heat of his sweat beneath her palms, the firmness of his muscles against her short nails. His thrusts are delicious, pounding, but there’s only a handful of them—so few, too few—before he begins to slow down, before he’s too large to slip in and out with ease anymore. Agatha wants to scream, to groan in frustration, _you said you would fuck me, you said you would take care of me_! But the words won’t come out because of the pressure—inside her, where his knot is expanding steadily, so large and fat, and outside, his hips and balls against her, his hands crushing her wherever they can reach, his lips against her slack mouth—and then.

Then.

He is locked inside, impossibly large, unyielding, and Agatha’s orgasm swells in waves—first sharp contractions in her abdomen that have Ben bury his head in her throat and moan against her gland, and then a rush of heat and spasms that makes her hold onto him as tight as she can, a trembling mess of tears and sweat on her face. When pleasure crashes against her, unforgiving, the relief is instantaneous.

_Bliss. This is—bliss._

When it’s Ben’s turn, he comes for whole minutes. He growls into her skin, all his muscles tense and flexing, and then just lets go, eyes squeezed shut as he releases over and over in long, heavy spurts, grinding against her hips as he moans and groans and whispers nonsense that Agatha should know better than to take seriously.

_Take it—All of it._

_Your cunt is so tight._

_I’ll see you through your heats, all of them._

And then, after everything.

_My come’s so deep inside you, you’ll never get it out._

Agatha is too sated and happy to care that he can’t possibly mean any of this.

When he’s spent the last of what he has, he slumps on top of Agatha, knocking the wind out of her.

“Fuck—I’m too heavy, sorry.” He shifts and maneuvers them until he’s on his back, Agatha on top, still locked fast inside her. He’s so large, and warm, and solid underneath her—a perfect Alpha—that it’s impossible to feel anything but one hundred percent content. No room to worry when the knot will release them, whether he’s eager to leave now that he’s spent, whether he feels as whole as she does in the aftermath. He’s still hard, and every once in a while, his cock twitches with aftershocks, making Agatha shiver with pleasure and hold him tighter.

“You did good,” Ben murmurs, voice even lower than usual as he runs a lazy hand down her spine. “I am very pleased.”

Agatha can tell that the words have a deep instinctual history, that Ben is pulling them out of some primitive, Alpha part of his hindbrain. He must be, because the Omega inside her hums with happiness, and Agatha tries to get closer, tighter against him—inside his skin, that would be ideal, right now.

 _You did good_. A voice inside her preens. _You pleased your Alpha. You are worthy._

For precious minutes, Agatha is wholly at peace.

And then, the fires begin again.

* * *

He fucks her for three days straight. Keeping track of how many times is impossible, with the way the pleasure bleeds into more pleasure until the simple act of Ben pulling out of her to get food, or water, becomes foreign and upsetting to her. To Ben, too, considering that he can’t seem to let Agatha out of his sight for more than a moment or two.

Not that she cares to be.

Agatha's bedroom is a disaster. When the messy combination of their fluids becomes too much, Ben haphazardly wipes it away from her inner thighs with a corner of the sheet. The bed is soaked halfway through the first day, but Ben’s growl when Agatha offers to get fresh bedding is not entirely human, and his response is to fuck her twice in a row without letting her come up for air.

Agatha thinks she gets it. Her room, her entire apartment—it smells so good, it’s almost scary, to think that a time existed when their scents weren’t enveloping it.

They talk. Sometimes. Other times they just lay there, tied together, kissing infinitely or staring and tracing each other’s skin—freckles, scars, moles. It isn’t long before Agatha has the constellations of his skin memorized. When they talk, it’s small, disjointed conversations about inconsequential things, like that time Agatha had to retake the MCAT because she was so sleep-deprived from waiting tables at night that she conked out in the middle of the test. Or that in MS3, Ben signed up for a half-marathon but ended up running a whole one because he followed the wrong race.

Several times, he tells her in a wonderstruck tone how beautiful he finds her, how warm and soft and wet and fuckable and perfect, and Agatha finds it hard to care whether it means anything or not, when it feels as if they are the only two people in the world.

The little she eats, he feeds her by hand. Slices of apple and peach, some juice. The perfect foods, foods she never chooses but somehow craves, and it occurs to Agatha that she hadn’t bought any of it, which means that Ben must have brought it over.

“What about work?” she attempts to ask once, as he’s feeding her a segment from an orange that he has just peeled. Sweet, cool, and bright, the juice soothes her throat as she swallows. Agatha will never enjoy an orange the same way again.

“Fuck work,” he says, distracted. He is staring at her mouth. Again. Agatha wishes he’d let her use it on him, but he doesn’t seem to have the patience for it. Not now.

“No—I mean it. Today’s a—” Wednesday? Thursday? The blinds are down, and Agatha has no idea how long they’ve been in here. Not long enough, for sure. She’s not done with him, and he is definitely not done with her. “What about your patients, don’t you have to—”

“It’s fine.” She is still chewing, but he leans over to kiss her softly on the lips. “I’m here.”

 _He’s taking care of you_ , an Omega-sounding voice inside her head whispers. _He’s perfect. He’s the ideal Alpha._

Agatha quells it.

One time, only once, he groans and flips her around to start fucking her from behind. And it’s heaven, it’s even deeper this way, it’s otherworldly. Agatha feels pride that she can take all of him now, all inside her. He palms her breast and leans forward and that’s it—just the whisper of his breath on her mating gland takes her right to the verge of coming, a mix of ecstasy and pain that has tears running down her face, and if he doesn’t touch her there, if he doesn’t lick her, if she cannot feel his teeth inside her Agatha will—

Ben pulls out with a growl, turning Agatha over until she’s on her back and then sliding inside once more, chest pressed against her front as he pins her to the bed.

“No, no, no, no, stay, what are you—”

Her Alpha bites her on the neck, and Agatha immediately quiets down, that combination of pleasure and unsatisfied agony still radiating from her mating gland. It’s only later, when he’s released inside her and they’re knotted together on their sides, his fingers trailing on the skin between her shoulder blades, that he tells her.

“I can’t be trusted. Around this.”

Agatha nods, and tries to burrow deeper inside him.

* * *

The last time, (the fourth day?) Agatha’s smell has shifted just enough that she knows that—it's almost over. She still wants him though, like she did before this heat and like she will afterwards—forever, probably. She says nothing and lifts herself up, up until she’s on top of him, her knees on either side of his hips, her palms planted on his huge chest.

She thinks that Ben must know, too, that they’re near the end, because his hands close around her waist, and he seems unable to look away from her as she works to take him inside her.

“Whatever you need,” he husks at her with difficulty, as he strokes her clit and then the place where they are joined. “Whatever you need, you come to me.”

She nods, and sighs as she finally manages to sink herself down to the hilt.

So full.

Her hair is a curtain around them, letting some of the sunlight filter inside but effectively trapping his—their—incredible smell between them. Ben’s thick cock fills her beyond comfort, until there is nothing, nowhere inside her that is not molded by him.

“There is no way I’m fucking you without knotting you. Never again.”

His voice is warm and rich and deep, and Agatha realizes that this is the closest she has ever felt to belonging.

* * *

She knows he’s gone before fully waking up, no matter that his scent is all over the apartment, on the sheets—even inside her.

 _That’s why you usually meet at his place,_ an obnoxious voice reminds her. Because Alpha scent lingers, and infiltrates, and sticks—it will probably take forever to get it out of her home. It will still be driving her out of her mind in weeks. Which won’t be helpful if she hopes to back off again as she’d resigned herself to do before her heat.

She’s not sure how she expected to feel after this heat, but absolutely great wasn’t it. A headache, maybe, or muscles aching at the very least, but well rested and ready to run a road race—no, she did not see that coming. Her body feels spectacular.

Agatha wonders how Ben felt, right after. Before leaving. This was Agatha’s situation, after all, and Ben was there to help, but he didn’t have to. Maybe he was exhausted, by the second day of non-stop sex. Maybe he’s sick of her, sick of her scent, sick of her voice.

_Maybe that’s why he left._

Ugh. It doesn’t matter why he left. Or why he came. It’s over now. She needed him and he was there. _Just be grateful and move forward._

On the night before returning to work, Agatha feels anxious. She truly has no idea what the etiquette is, for this _situation_. Should she drop him a thank you note? A gift basket, or something? Should she go to him? Give him space? Pretend nothing happened? _Fuck._

 _Whatever. It’s fine._ Absolutely fine.

It hits Agatha suddenly, that the wetness trickling down her neck is spilling out from the corners of her eyes.

“Shit.” She wipes her cheeks with the heels of her hands, wishing she were still asleep. “Shit.”


	8. Chapter 8

It’s two weeks before she sees him again. She’s reviewing a patient chart on her phone while waiting for an elevator—why is everyone headed down today? She looks up and finds him standing in front of her, not even a second after the ping that signals the opening of the doors.

Ben looks…disheveled. He has a five o’clock shadow and bags under his eyes, and his hair looks—long, and he smells so good and comforting that it’s all Agatha can do not to just plaster herself against him, bury her face in his chest and bite into his muscles and beg him to scent her and—

“Hey.”

_His voice._

Unsure of the state of her vocal cords, Agatha clears her throat.

And then… they just stand there, not three feet apart, regarding each other warily.

 _Are you alright?_ She so wants to ask him. He looks awful. But they haven’t talked in so long. There was a conference, and Agatha had a training to attend, and for some reason their shifts don’t overlap anymore, and Agatha has been meaning, wanting, needing to get in touch with him but he left, he just left after her heat was over and they were done and sometimes she can’t sleep at night, surrounded by their scent, and she just doesn’t know what to do with any of it.

“Ben—you coming?”

A short distance away from them, Phasma sounds irritated. Though Phasma always does, so…

Ben seems to jostle himself out of—of whatever that staring contest was—and nods.

“Yes.”

He follows Phasma and walks past Agatha, without looking back.

* * *

Fumbling for her house key with a sleeping toddler draped over one shoulder and a rolling suitcase leaning against the door is a familiar annoyance. Still Agatha feels content to have her little one home again, looking a little bigger and sporting a full-on threenager attitude after spending a whole summer being shamelessly spoiled by her father. As challenging as it will be to reset limits on sweets and screen time, Agatha feels confident that it’s good for her child, to be indulged by one parent. If she’s less the fun one and more the limit-setter, she can live with that.

As she lays Opal down into her own bed, both hands immediately raise up rod-straight above her head, as her legs and toes curled up to her body and her back arches in a sleepy stretch she’s done since she was an infant. Just about every time Agatha lays her down, her daughter performs this stretch before her small body settles back into sleep. And it always, always, melts Agatha’s heart.

She can put the Ben chapter behind her. She can move on, as she’d intended. It’s fine. It’s all good. Her baby is home again and everything is right with the world. 

* * *

Agatha has been in too many hospitals, for too large a chunk of her life, to not recognize that she is in a hospital bed before she opens her eyes.

What she doesn’t know is how she got here, since her last memory is of traipsing through the hallway on her way to pick up a post-op PET scan of her patient’s lungs, and then—nothing. Well. Something.

Once she opens her eyes, a smiling face positions itself between Agatha and her view of the partitioned ceiling.

“Doctor Mead, I’m Nurse Cole.”

Neither the face nor the name are familiar—“Where am I?”

“Hospital.”

_No shit._

“Yeah, um—which one?”

The nurse chuckles. “The one you work in. You’re in Radiology—you lost consciousness.”

“I—what?”

“Low blood sugar. You were given a glucagon injection.”

Agatha tries to remember the last time she ate. She’d skipped dinner last night. Did she have breakfast? No, she was leading patient rounds, and doesn’t really remember having breakfast. Surely she must have eaten something today—

“What time is it?!” She jolted upright--she was due to pick up Opal from preschool at four. The act resulted in stars dancing before her eyes, and a darkening of her vision.

“Whoa, not so fast.” The nurse guided her back to the pillow, “How do you feel?”

Disoriented, but “Fine. What time is it? My daughter needs to be picked up.”

“Not to worry, we’ve called your mate, just in case.”

“What?”

The nurse turns and begins puttering around the room. “Your mate. He’s on his way.”

“My… My mate?” _What the fuck?_ “There’s some kind of mistake here. What day is today?” Agatha asks.

The nurse clucks her tongue. “Nu-uh. That’s my line. You doctors really do make the worst patients, don’t you?”

“I—”

“Today’s date?”

Agatha has to think about it. “September fourth?”

The nurse beams at her. “Correct. You get to go home, Doctor Mead.”

“What—did I hit my head?”

“Nuse Tico was right behind. She you broke your fall.” She pats Agatha on the cheek, both brisk and motherly. “Don’t worry, we told your mate that it wasn’t anything serious, so he wouldn’t worry sick.”

“I don’t—"

“He’s not on your records, by the way—your listed emergency contact was entered months ago. Someone with a West Coast phone number? But don’t worry, we have an Alpha nurse on the floor, and she recognized your scent right away. Still, you should really update the paperwork.”

The paperwork? Her scent?

“What are you—”

“Agatha.”

She turns her head towards the entrance so quickly that it nearly brings on a bout of tunnel vision—

_Of course._

Of course, of course, of course the universe hates Agatha and would send her an Alpha nurse with a great sense of smell who takes it upon herself to call Ben, all because Agatha forgot to bring her trail mix to work.

She hasn’t seen him since that awkward meeting in the hallway, days ago, and now—this. _God_. Agatha sits up—slowly and deliberately this time.

“Ben.”

He walks up to her, expression inscrutable—is he worried? Is he pissed? He comes to a stop right beside the bed, and from this angle he looks like he’s about ten and a half feet tall.

“You okay?” 

“Yes. I—I’m totally fine, you really didn’t need to…” _Come here._

“I’ve called Dameron. He’s recruited someone to pick up your daughter from school.”

Relief washes over her. Probably Finn. Opal will be delighted to see Finn. Agatha mentally pats herself on the back for having the forethought to add Poe and Finn to the pick-up list for Pearl, just in case. _Wait, how had Ben known?_ Her child wasn’t a secret, exactly, but she’d always carefully avoided the subject around Ben. It wasn’t too difficult as they rarely conversed about personal matters.

He studies her for a few moments, and then—Agatha’s breath catches, when he steps a little closer and lifts his hand to push the hair back from her brow; and bends down just enough to press his warm lips in the center of her forehead.

 _God. That tenderness could break me._ Affection, it turns out is far more dangerous than sex ever was. She didn’t want to weigh whether this gesture was genuine or some sort of façade performed for the sake of the nurse.

“Doctor Solo, your mate can go home. Do make sure that she eats more regularly and gets some rest, though.”

Agatha winces at the nurse’s chiding tone. Ben’s going to yell at her, now. And at Agatha, too. He’s going to tell them that there is no reason he should give a fuck about any of this, and that he’s here to work and not to baby-sit some idiotic Omega who just can’t seem to get her life together—

“I will. Thank you.”

Oh.

Okay, then.

As soon as the nurse is out of the door, an uncomfortable silence falls on the room. Agatha’s eyes flit unconsciously away from Ben to the wall to her lap to the floor—and Ben seems to shift away from her a little.

“You still smell like me,” Ben tells her, and Agatha could try to interpret his tone, but—

She shakes her head. “I am so sorry you got pulled away from work again. This is—terrible.”

He looks at her for a few beats and then nods, lips a thin line. He repeats, “Terrible.”

He just stands there, with his usual moody, sullen expression, and out of the blue Agatha feels a frisson of irritation in response. Yes, this scenario sucks, but Ben is the one who scented her during her heat, and to a lesser extent before then, too—he’d always initiated it, always. He can take his annoyance and stuff it where the sun doesn’t shine.

“Ben, I don’t like this any more than you do.”

This was the wrong thing to say, because now—now he looks angry, on top of sulky.

“Yeah. Well, I apologize if my presence here is inconveniencing you.” 

“No, I—come on—that’s not what I meant.” _Damn it._ “Please. I just wanted you to know that it’s bullshit, this ‘mate’ thing. I didn’t put anyone up to this. And I certainly didn’t mean to disrupt your life…again.” _I’m not a clingy Omega stereotype. I swear!_

Ben stares at her for a few more seconds and then sighs, chest expanding, large shoulders lifting up and then down again, and—God, did he have to be so big? The room they’re in already smells delicious to Agatha, like every other room he’s spent more than a handful of seconds inside. It’s really messing with her brain.

“You might want to choose an emergency contact.” Ben has averted his eyes and is examining his own feet. “It baffles, how a physician such as yourself could constantly _neglect_ her own basic needs.“

His tone is snooty, and tired, not sarcastic. Resigned, maybe? There are splotches of something darkening his scrubs, and Agatha wishes she knew how long he’s been on shift. If he just got out of surgery. If he’s been sleeping poorly.

“I do have one. An old one. He’s just too far away to…” Why is she explaining? It doesn’t matter. _Shit._

His jaw sets. “Right.”

God, he must hate her. She hates herself a bit, too.

“I will. Change my contact.” To Poe. Or Finn. “And—thanks for coming.” She swallows around the dryness of her throat. “I’m really very sorry.”

“You mentioned that, already.”

“I know, I’m sor—”

She catches herself just in time, and—Suddenly, the awareness blooms in her head. That…

This is Ben. He is here. Agatha has been wanting to talk to him again for weeks, and no, this is not the ideal scenario--he probably hates being here, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s here. Yet again, he’s here for her and he’s speaking to her, and he’s looking at her.

Agatha smiles up at him, because she feels like it, because she wants to, and—his mouth twitches in response, just a little bit, a nothing-smile that means everything to Agatha.

Her heart melts.

“Sorry. About being sorry.”

He shakes his head minutely. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

“Oh, no. No need. I can—”

“Agatha, there is no way the nurse will let you drive. You just fainted.”

“I’m fine. And they don’t need to know—”

“Do you hate the idea so much?”

Again, that air of resignation in his eyes that baffles Agatha. _What’s going on, Ben Solo? Is there anything I can do?_

“No. No, I just hate to put you out unnecessarily…Well, you live super close, anyway, right?”

“I do.”

_Why do you look so sad?_

“Okay. Thanks. I'll need to go get my stuff first.”

Ben nods. “I’ll come with you.”

The drive home is quiet, but not unpleasant. Agatha dozes off in the passenger seat, soothed by the baritone of the NPR host, by the fuzzy rhythm of the sunlight filtering in and out of the windows of Ben’s car. Once he’s parked in the garage below Agatha’s apartment building, he wakes her with a warm hand on her thigh, and Agatha surfaces out of a light sleep with a smile.

“We’re home?”

“Yes.”

He walks her upstairs, hand steady on her lower back, sticking a little too close—probably afraid that she’ll feel woozy again and faint and get some kind of head injury that’ll take twenty hours of neurosurgery to fix. He also insists on unlocking her door himself when they’re in front of her place, and then—then he doesn’t follow her in once it’s open, and Agatha is home now, which means that Ben is going to either go back to the hospital or head for his place or… or whatever else it is that he does when he’s not with her.

“Thanks,” Agatha says, and at least it’s not ‘I’m sorry.’ She’s oddly pleased. “Did you, um, want something to drink? Or eat?”

He shakes his head and stays put just outside of Agatha’s doorway. She should be glad, since the smell of him is only just starting to fade, but—

Come in. Please. We really should talk. Please, please, please. _Come in._

Why can’t she ask him?

“You should get some rest. And eat.”

“Yes. Yes, I will.”

He doesn’t look like he wants to leave, either, but she can never tell with him.

“Was there anything else you needed?”

“No, I’m good. Thank you again.”

“Okay.”

He’s nodding now, and she is, too. And then they’re just staring at each other, and he’s about to leave, was going to leave two minutes ago, probably shouldn’t even be here to begin with, and Agatha finds herself—instinctually—reaching out for him, catching the sleeve of his Henley is between her fingers, the skin of his wrist warm and familiar under hers. She’s also not sure what makes her tug at it, a pitiful, childish gesture that must reveal how terribly needy she is. How desperately she needs him to need her back.

_Please Ben, there must be something I can do for you. Tell me what you want. I’d do anything to be there for you._

There, she’s admitted it to herself. It’s there. Floating around her head, now.

When Agatha has the courage to look up, Ben is staring down at her, lips parted, and there is a war on his face, some merciless battle that Agatha is not privy to; for a moment she is positive he’s going to answer, _No, Agatha. No,_ to the implicit request she’s making. But he doesn’t. He seems to come to some sort of resolution, to acquiesce, and he leans forward to kiss her on the mouth, soft and chaste. This is short, and sweet, and it only deepens when Agatha raises on her toes to return it in full, burying her fingers in his hair and humming her bliss.

At least she has this, she tells herself, too relieved to be kissing him again to be bitter about it. At least he likes her scent and maybe even her body enough to stay.

For tonight.

Taking his hand, she leads him inside. “I need to call and check in on Opal and Finn. It’ll only take a minute.”

* * *

It’s different, from the other times. It lasts longer, for one, longer than it ever has before. Ben seems to take years to undress her, losing track of his progress to stare at the skin he just uncovered as if he’d never seen it before. Even when he has them both naked on the bed he seems adamant to pace himself, to savor and linger, to touch everywhere—no matter how much Agatha may attempt to sway him. His cock leaks in her hands, on her thighs, between her legs, and he still won’t get inside her, he still won’t fill her up, and Agatha—she teeters there, dying on the edge, refusing to beg and then doing it anyway.

_Please._

Then, it’s slow. Thick and delicious agony, thorough. Slowly inside and slowly out, and then too slowly back inside again. Ben stops too often to lick at her nipples and scrape his teeth on her glands and to just stare at her. Agatha would go mad, but he twines the fingers of both hands with her own, and that, only that anchors her to reality. When the time comes, he allows his knot to swell and engage until he’s locked deep inside her, and without the fever and the dizziness of her heat there is—a poignancy, to it.

 _How can this be meaningless?_ Agatha thinks, mind liquid from the heart-cutting pleasure. _When it is everything. This is—_

Her orgasm hits her and she falls, and he falls, and they fall together, clutching sweaty skin and gasping in each other’s mouths. Neither of them says one single word. Even Ben, usually all growls and groans and the occasional low-muttered obscenity, just presses down on her and comes silently.

They kiss afterwards, as they wait for the swelling to subside. It’s long, drugging kisses that would have been more appropriate as a prelude to sex, and there’s an edge to them, a mix of desperation and worship that has hot, fat, stupid tears running down Agatha's cheeks. Ben kisses those, too, his expression unreadable through Agatha’s watery eyes, and then—then he only feels large, not enormous inside her, and he can finally slip out of her, so—naturally—he does. Between her shoulder blades, Agatha’s mating gland aches and throbs, a miserable soreness that has her dread the moment he will leave her apartment.

 _What’s left then? What’s left, when you’re gone_?

Agatha is boneless, with no energy left to move, and can’t help but lie there, staring at Ben’s back as he dresses. Whether he realizes, she doesn’t know. If he does, he doesn’t seem to mind, and when he’s fully dressed he returns to sit on Agatha’s side of the bed, his palms on each side of her head as he looks down at her.

“Do you want some food?”

 _That would be lovely, Alpha_.

“No, thanks.”

He’s staring at her. “Anything else you might need? A blanket?”

_Stay. You are so warm._

“No. I’m gonna get in the shower.”

“I’ll carry you.”

“No—Thanks, I’m alright.”

He hesitates, as if reluctant to tell her what to do. “You shouldn’t. You should just rest.”

Lazily, she raises one hand to trace the angles of his face, admiring the way his cheekbones slant, his beautiful almond shaped eyes, the fullness of his mouth. He is so _unbearably_ beautiful. What she would give if only… _if only he was capable of loving her back._

A few months ago, when Agatha had just moved here, one of the nurses whom he’d just yelled at for an infiltrating IV or something of the like had called him weird-ass looking behind his back. _Ugly as sin,_ she had said. Even back then, Agatha had never understood what she was talking about.

“Are you going back to the hospital?”

He shakes his head. “Tomorrow morning.”

“Where are you going, then?”

“Home.”

“Mmm. To sleep?”

“Probably.”

“And eat?”

“I’m not hungry.” He eats so little. For someone so big.

“Will you go to bed right away?”

He shrugs, but doesn’t move away. Agatha’s hand is on his cheek now, cupping it. Her thumb traces his lower lip, and he is—shockingly—letting her. “I might read a bit.”

“Work stuff?”

He shakes his head and—was that a kiss to the tip of her finger?

Impossible.

“Ender’s Game?”

The side of his mouth curls up. He smells like—everything Agatha has ever wanted. She could die happy, right now.

“I’m almost done with _The Triad of Being_.”

“Oooh. That’s a good series.”

“Not my favorite –the characters are poorly developed, but it’s full of really original ideas.”

Agatha has to laugh.

“Ben, I think you might have a problem.”

He—yes, he is smiling. Bashful, bittersweet, but it’s a smile. “Is it you?”

Agatha laughs again. How is this happening? How is he being so sweet? He is an unforgivable asshole, a bully to everyone at work. But for some time now, she’s had to willfully remind herself that he’s a dick. When it’s just the two of them, he’s really kind of wonderful. From nowhere a crazy, stupid, fantastic, idea springs into her head.

 _Don’t do it. Don’t do it. He’ll say no, and you’ll regret it. And even worse_ — _he’ll know._

But with Ben within her easy reach, with Ben acting as her Alpha would—it’s the least alone Agatha has ever felt. And she really, really wants this. So much.

“Hey, you know that hospital fundraiser? Next month?”

He grimaces, and Agatha chuckles.

“That bad?”

“It’s very….” His eyes move around as he looks for the right word, and then settles for, “performative. A waste of time.”

“Mmm.” Agatha’s fingertips are playing against his five o’clock shadow. Pleasantly scratchy. She is curious to know how he’d look, if he grew a beard. Surely not more handsome than he currently is—that would be impossible. “These things usually are.”

“These things are fucking terr—”

Agatha smiles as she pushes her fingers against his lips to hush him. He lets her, because while he might be a wild beast most of the time, today he is mostly… domesticated.

“Are you going?”

“I don’t exactly have a choice.”

“Oh.”

It’s her moment. Just ask, damn it.

_Do you want to go with me?_

Her mind races, searching for the right way to couch it. _We could stay very little—I’d eat my weight in hors d'œuvres while you make scathing remarks over the hospital executive board or the staggering waste of money and time. Then we’d go to your place and maybe watch a film? or just talk? And after that we’d do this thing that we do so well, that is supposed to be just fucking, even though tonight, a few minutes ago, it felt like something completely different._

_It felt like—_

“Are you?”

Agatha blinks. “What?”

“Are you going?”

_Or…_

Or she could chicken out. Her mind fixates on all the times he left her just as soon as he could. How little he spoke to her over the weeks of their, liaisons. How many times he’d had that brooding, half-nauseated look on his face in her presence. How little he seemed to want anything to do with her, when biology wasn’t dictating his desire. A man like him could never really be a partner…or a loving influence in Opal’s life. Snoke’s cutting words stick in her mind: _Nothing of value to offer someone like him._

She can’t risk it. For Opal’s sake. For her own sanity. _Let him go._

Agatha lets her hand fall back onto the mattress.

“We have to, right?”

Ben nods. “We do.”

They hold eyes for a heavy, silent stretch, then Ben straightens away from her and stands, a giant in her small bedroom. Agatha feels immediately bereft—at the loss of both his scent and his warmth.

Ben clears his throat. “I guess I’ll see you there, then.” His lips press together as his jaw tenses.

A second ago, Agatha was touching those lips. A second ago, she was in his arms. Ben leaves with a lingering look and a brief nod, without saying goodbye.


End file.
